Self settle tips please

Wexy86

Hi

Looking for some tips on how to teach/train baby to self settle that is a gentle approach rather than cry it out or controlled crying. I cant find anything of great use online other than CIO and I just can't do that to my little one.

She 5 months old and at the moment is wheeled or rocked asleep for her naps and her nighttime sleep, takes about 20 mins to get her to settle.
It's not the end of the world to do it but I hurt my back today and will take a few weeks to mend so it's not ideal to be holding her for 20 mins if possible.

she wakes between 10 and 15 times most nights :-( she won't take a feed or need a nappy change so I'm hoping that if I can get her to self settle it might help her sleep a bit longer. When she wakes she takes a dummy and this settles her if she's drowsy enough.

Thanks in advance.

margo321

Hi, i went to a information chat type thing with a sleep consultant and she said to try put her in the cot and sit next to baby and hush and pat her gently. With the hope of patting and hushing less and less. She said completely avoid using the bottle to get baby to sleep as once they get used to going to sleep with the bottle they will need ot more amd more waking several times a night. We have a two year old and gave in and go to bed with her to get to sleep then move her to the cot. And the only other tip she had was to make sure baby is full and wont wake from hunger. Good luck and speedy recovery

otwb1

We had some great advice which was not to look at/interact with the baby at night. So you look after the baby, make sure that they're OK, but limit the eye contact etc until it's time to get up. It worked for us in helping baby figure out the difference between night and day.

scarepanda

Hi wexy86!

My lo is about the same age as yours. Here's our bedtime routine. I dunno if it will be of any help to you, but it now takes me about 10 minutes and our lo sleeps through the night.

What we did was to decide what time was bed time ( for us 9pm) and stick to that religiously, especially for the first few weeks. I bring her up to her room, change her nappy, put on PJs and sleep sack. All lights are off except for a low lit side lamp we leave on all night and another lamp which is beside the rocker. I wouldn't speak to her from this point onwards, and I'd have done all my goodnight kisses and hugs as well. I start feeding her and turn off the second lamp as soon as she has latched on. I let her feed and one she's finished I put her on my shoulder to allow her to get any wind up and use the rocker to rock her into sleepiness while humming the same tune. Once she starts to drift off I put her down into the cot and leave the room. At this stage she'd be semi conscious. Sometimes she drops off straight away, others she might wake up. If she wakes up I only go back into her if she's crying. If she's whinging/fussing I let her be as she usually fights sleep, but she will have dropped off usually within 5/10 minutes.

At first I also set a limit of 30 minutes for bed time routine and then put her into the cot regardless of how awake she was and only went back in when she was crying. I don't let her cry it out. She has a certain cry that I know there's no return from and go straight up to her once I hear it. If I have to go back in I wouldn't speak or interact with her and I wouldn't try feed her if it was within a few minutes of putting her down, as long as it wasn't her teeth etc that was at her and had a full feed. At first she used to fight me for the full 30 minutes, but by sticking to the same routine religiously she quickly learned that it was bedtime and now I'll have her in the cot in about 10 minutes and most of that is spent feeding her. I'm still breastfeeding her, but have also given her a bottle doing the same routine with the same results.

I purposely kept bedtime as simple as possible so that we can follow the routine as closely as possible when we are away etc. It will take a few days for your lo to learn that a certain routine is sleepy time. They just need to make the association. Also as good as my lo is for me, she fights my OH when he has to put her down because, while he follows the same routine, he does some things slightly differently -which is completing natural and expected- but she hasn't fully made the connection with him putting her down and sleepy time. He finds it very hard that she's so good for me, and fights him, but it's mainly because I do bedtime because it's just handier while I'm still breastfeeding. She knows that if she fights him enough he will get up and walk her around, turn on her mobile etc etc etc to try distract her, but that's exactly what she wants as then he's breaking the routine and delays bedtime. But with some guidance from me as to when she was starting to get sleepy he has successfully put her down. I'm pretty relaxed about most things, but bedtime routine is the routine!

I know she can self sooth these days as her new thing now is to wake as soon as I put her on my shoulder a coo away at me trying to get my attention, when she does this straight into the cot she goes as I'll get no where with her as she only makes me laugh with her antics otherwise. Once she's in the cot she will coo away to herself and fall asleep a few minutes later without any fuss.

Anyways, that's what we do and it works for us pretty reliably.

dori_dormer

5 months may still be a bit young for self soothing. I don't think babies are able to understand it until after 6 months ( or 18mths if you speak to my eldest!) I think 20 min is short enough.
Id try the above, putting her down sleepy but awake. Or if you have a partner could they do bedtime while your back heals?

The other thing is the dependency on the soother. This past week I was up every 30 minutes with my 7mth old. Was driving me nuts ! He had a cold and couldn't breathe with the soother, but needed it to stay asleep.
You could try putting them asleep without the soother?
I also resettle my fella by rubbing his back or patting his bum. White noise helps too.
Best of luck! And I hope you have a speedy recovery