What sort of age is it realistic to expect babies to settle themselves?

[MrsHD]

Just wondering. Max at 19 days seems to be too young for everything except sleeping to his own agenda and feeding all hours of the day and night, which I know is bang on for 19 days and won't last forever, however it feels!

Once or twice we've put him down at the eyes open/eyes closed dozy stage and he's settled himself to sleep, but it's not usually successful. It may be he's far far too young for this, but just wondered what the general consensus was?

Thanks.

Congratulations on Max's arrival

re settling - 4 months for mine (but still with dummy)...definitely far too young at 19 days. I started trying the same things as you are though so understand where you are coming from and I think having an aim in mind can help to get you there but try not to worry to much about whether he is on track etc - they are all different. Enjoy him and get as much rest as you can.

My DD, now 4, was fed, rocked, driven, cuddled, and goodness knows what else to sleep in her first year and I paid the price with 3 years of horrendous sleep deprivation culminating in me being scared of my own temper and spending £800 on a private sleep nanny, who worked wonders.

I now have an 8 week old and am leaning too far the other way, expecting the poor kid to put himself to sleep despite half an hour of screaming protest beforehand, so scared am I of repeating the mistakes made with DD.

Somewhere between these 2 extremes is sensible-land - my advice is don't give yourself a hard time but recognise that sleep training if you have a very hard case like my DD is incredibly hard work.