What gets your baby to sleep?

[JimmyMcNulty]

Just curious, really. Does anyone have babies that just fall asleep on their own wherever they are, whenever they get tired? Or do you rock/ shh-pat/ dummy/ feed to sleep/ put in sling/ leave to cry? Am wondering what the most common ways are.

I am thinking really about after the initial newborn phase when they seem to fall asleep at the drop of a hat and lull you into thinking you've got it sorted .

For me: ds1 had a dummy - easy peasy.
Ds2 won't take one and is currently fed/jiggled to sleep.

Sleepy bump

DD1 was shh-pat, or feed to sleep. She was good at night and daytime naps in cot but terrible out and about. If she fell asleep in car seat pushchair etc she'd wake as soon as the movement stopped. Other people's babies could just be left in their seats zonked out

DD2 is 2.5 months, she is a dummy baby, so far sleeping well at night but won;t settle at all in the day for anyone or anything. We are only giving her the dummy at night though, and she spits it out a lot, don't know why I'm bothering with it really . If she doesn't go straight off she's having upright cuddles as she gets a bit windy sometimes.

Fed, jiggled, rocked in pram, dummy (until it caused a lot of problems) and sat beside humming while baby crying and feeling awful. Back to jiggling now in the dark with a lullaby playing.

Tried it all. All works. But baby wakes up a lot and they all say you should let them settle themselves - but I hate the crying!

Glad to know I'm not the only one feeding to sleep.

Breastfeeding to sleep - this was the only thing that consistently worked.

Also music. We used to put DD to sleep next to a CD player with various CDs on. Her favourite was Kate Bush.

swaddling clothes

Breastfed/ rocked to sleep, if he's with me.

If I'm working or am out when it's his bed time (rare), he falls asleep on DH's lap. DH says DS has occasionally fallen asleep just sitting beside him on the couch.

He has just, since our holidays in the summer, started occasionally falling asleep in his pushchair. He did today and has been sleeping in it for over an hour (I am thrilled, he really needed it and I was hoping he wouldn't wake when the motion stopped).

He's never been good at settling himself to sleep, and I've never been able to stand hearing him cry.

dd2 (3 months) does! shes put in her cot awake

Breastfed to sleep. Both dd's. Nature is a clever thing - why go against it?

DS is 11 months, he goes to sleep by movement (car seat or pushchair), nursing (if he is tired enough. And ONLY lying down, not with me sitting holding him.) or just being strapped into his pushchair and left quietly in a room (not crying) or sometimes in front of ITNG

He wakes when you move him though and I have to feed him back to sleep as he is not awake enough to want to get up, he is grumpy IYSWIM.

You don't have to leave them to cry if you don't want to It does tend to mean more time spent settling - but it is your choice, don't listen to the people who say they "need to learn to self-settle".

At 18 months, breast feeding or the movement of the car.

Will go to sleep cuddling dh if I'm not around, but mostly it's breast feeding.

when its me, breastfeed, pushchair or sling.

He'll cuddle to sleep for other people but only at the right time.

DH was left to cry at one point when it was that or throw him across the room, but other than that we've never tried to get him to settle without intervention. Then one day, almost overnight at around 15-16mo he started sleeping 2hrs a day and self settling really well when he stirred - IME they do it when they're ready

Either fed to sleep, or allowed to wriggle/roll/crawl (depending on age) around the carpet until she fell to sleep and then was carried to bed.

No deliberate settling, no crying.

that was DS that was left to cry - although at that point I was doing quite a bit of crying too, and DH wasn't far off

Moonlight that sounds great I was hoping DS would be like that (he was briefly at the rolling stage) but he just gets overtired and ends up tripping over himself and sobbing at the tiniest thing

Breastfed to sleep - it almost always worked.

I Just leave my 4 month old DS after a good feed in his cot, had a few little cries for the first few nights. Didn't take him long to get used to his surroundings - now he always falls asleep minutes after being put down in his cot, in his own room - and last night slept from 10pm till 6.15 for the 1st time! yaaaaay first night of undisturbed sleep in 4 months......absolute heaven

our DD (10 wks) is a terrible one for getting over-tired, so we've tried every combination of shushing/patting/rocking/swaddling etc etc. but the one thing that's guaranteed to work, even if she's frantically fighting sleep, is the hairdryer! i swaddle her and put her in her crib with the dummy. turn the hairdryer on and she's asleep in minutes. we live in quite a noisy building to it also stops her being woken up again by noisy neighbours when she's starting to go to sleep. genius!!

Feed DD and then put her into her cot with her dummy (which she spits out) teddy and some music. She sings along and chats to teddy(she's 6 months!) before falling asleep. Quite often if she does cry out I will go in, she will giggle, I will leave. She is rather sneaky

Up until around 11 weeks DS2 was breastfed to sleep but then we got into more of a routine so I knew when he was tired and when he was hungry.

I was then able to put him in his cot awake when I knew he was ready for a nap and he would sometimes grizzle a bit but shock, horror I just left him and he's learnt to go to sleep on his own.

He's now five months and goes down for every nap and every evening without any fuss, not even a grizzle. He may lie there chatting for a bit to his mobile or teddy but that's about it.

I know I'm very lucky but I do think it's because I gave him the chance to self settle at an early age. After 11 weeks, other than the dream fed, I stopped feeding him to sleep.

Have just been rocking my 4.5 month dd to sleep so thought I would come back and reply to this! She has never really just fallen asleep when tired - at first was fed to sleep and swaddling really helped at night, until she got wriggly and could escape swaddle at about 12 wks!

White noise has also really helped - my dp has an app on his iphone which generates white noise! Although she seems to have recently become immune to this.

Currently I'm rocking her to sleep/singing hush little baby while she sucks her fingers. SOmetimes it takes 10-15mins. I'm sure some people would say I should try and wean her off the cuddles but I quite like them and she's sleeping through the night, settling her self by sucking her fingers when she stirs, so something must be working!