"bad habits" - should i chuck the book out the window?

[GirlWithTheMouseyHair]

ds is nearly 4 weeks - can he really be developing bad habits already (being rocked/fed to sleep, sleeping on us?) ds doesn't always do this, we generally put him down just before he nods off but i want to make sure we're not doing too much of the other stuff - or worrying about it unneccessarily!

No he can't develop bad habits yet, he is not capable of doing so. I don't know what the book you have is but generally speaking the best thing to do with them is throw them away!

We did all of this (except feeding to sleep, which I only did for the first couple of weeks) until DS was about 6 weeks, and then I decided I wanted to start thinking about other ways to settle him.
It literally took a couple of days to get him used to being patted and shhed on us and falling asleep, and then being patted and shhed in the cot (he will now fall asleep in the cot with just patting on a good day, and he is 10 weeks).
I think they do develop 'habits' at this age, but I also think it's very very very easy to change those habits while they're tiny if you decide to do so. it might be a bit harder the older he gets, but I reckon you've got a good few weeks before you need to worry about anything being ingrained.
Much more important at this stage that he gets into the habit of sleeping at night after feeds and partying during the day - you can worry about how that sleep happens once that's sorted out if you want to.

That's what I think anyway, others probably are far wiser and better...

Hey Mousey

I don't know whether you read this when I posted it in t'other place but it really made me feel better the other day and I also followed links from there to here and here (if page 2 doesn't load, click here). It might be on one of those links, but something I read yesterday made the very good point that we are happy for babies to bf or drink from a bottle and poo/pee into nappies but we don't think of those as being bad habits but something they'll grow out of when developmentally appropriate.

I am firmly in the throw-away-the-book camp (and am very cross with my otherwise lovely MW who told me that I was "making a rod for my own back" (I hate that phrase!) for letting DD sleep on us when she was about ten days old). We have done everything "wrong" (nurse to sleep, let her sleep on us, hold her lots, do whatever it takes to get to sleep). Last night she slept for eight hours, then woke up for a feed (because I made her!) and then slept or another hour or two - we can also sometimes put her down awake and let her drift off (though we are currently trying to get her to sleep and she's having none of it!). Obviously these things might not be related, but my take on it is that I'll never have the chance to cuddle her at this age again, so dammit I'm going to do it while I can and sod the consequences

Hi again! We initally always fed/rocked dd to sleep. I was very worried about such habits but you know what, our dd outgrew them herself. One day (around 3 months) I set her down, ready for a fuss, and instead she babbled a bit and fell asleep. She doesn't always go down quietly, but now she naps much better in her cot than in the pram. And I still occasionally feed her to sleep. So, yeah, I'd say throw that book away!

i would say not to worry at this stage - it's all about keeping everyone's sanity in a sleep deprived world. i had dd sleep on me for a good couple of months, not all the time and i would try and put her down every now and again

one day she just got too big for the whole thing and started wriggling instead of sleeping. i think they let you know when they've outgrown it - DD was around a few months old

I read about 40 books about sleep etc when dd2 was first born and with hind sight I should have just thrown them ALL out of the window as I would have been a lot more chilled out without them!