How / when did you move from rocking to sleep to self-settling?

subscribing!... I'm in the same boat. DD has turned 6months and is getting quite "difficult" at night. she will pretend to sleep while i'm rocking and the minute i put her in her cot she is wide awake! will start grinning/laughing loudly, which will proceed to loud chatting, then eventually gets cranky and starts crying. last night it took 2 hrs to settle her again and she is getting heavy! I can use all the help i can get.

Kim - when you say you sat next to her for hours, is she still crying? I just down know what to do when DD cries. Am i supposed to pick her up? is it ok to let her cry for a bit if you are next to her? :dunno:

DD started to self settle at 6months without rocking or patting. They are all so different though and will do things in their own time.

Good luck with your journey make sure you reach out for support when you need it. :hug:

Ok, so I put DD into her own room last night (she has been in her bassinet in our bedroom). put a nightlight on so it was darker than our room (we left the ensuite light on). Fed her, put her into cot and she was awake. patted her for a few minutes then walked out. she cried. went back in and patted her in the dark for 5 minutes and she fell asleep! Woot! woke up twice in the night but went back to sleep! Woot! Woot!
I think we might have been keeping her awake :redface: Hopefully it works again tonight. just had to share.

I'm glad I got inspired by this thread and finally did it! There's hope for us all.

Thats awesome Belle75! When we put DD into her own room she slept better too, I think all our tossing and turning must have been unsettling her.

Im suprised at how long it takes untill they self-settle. If someone had told me this when DD was born I would have been horrified! I guess there is a light at the end of the tunnel though :)

That's fantastic Belle! Unfortunately we had the opposite happen. Inspired by these success stories I decided to give it another go last night. DD just mucked around for aaaages. Kept standing up but this is quite dangerous at the mo as she's still hopeless at getting down again and tends to just let go and whack her head. So just lay there by the cot... got up, lay her down again... watched... tried not to giggle when she started wresting with her little toy...

Then eventually she got fed-up and cracked it. Now very over tired, she continued wailing when I picked her up and kept crying and grizzling for almost 2 hours. It usually takes about 15 mins to rock her to sleep. This turned into an epic 3 hr mission and left me very discouraged. Added on to this she slept worse over night, i think because she had gotten so upset when going to sleep that she kept waking up crying.

I want to keep giving her a chance to settle herself but I'm just not up for this kind of outcome on a regular basis.

I'm not quite sure if there's anything else anyone can suggest other than to just keep trying?!

Have you got a sleeping bag Kat? Might make it harder for her to stand. I've had to do this with my little one. I would say it was more successful when she was just learning to stand than now that she is really good at it, but now the bag is part of her routine.

I have had 3 night sleeps in a row where I haven't had to rock her to sleep! YAY! :dance: :confetti: :cheer: Routine, warm bath, routine - I reckon that's the key and I'm using suggestions out of NCSS too which are working for us.

Day sleeps are a different matter - today she has had dinner, bath and in bed by 5pm because her day sleeps have been a bf / biting nightmare. Went to put her down at 3.30pm and she bit me so then there were wails (from me!) and waterworks (from her!) so that was the end of that... I find putting her to bed early works on days that are not going so well for either of us!

I did pretty much the same thing as Trish with my first two. Gently taught them to self settle over a period of time using the same techniques. DS1 was not a good sleeper as a younger baby although he did learn to self settle quite early - the issue was he had a lot of trouble resettling himself once he woke.

I've struck it lucky with DS2 - he has been self settling from very early on, probably about 6-7 weeks. It wasn't anything I did, I assure you! He has just always been able to calmly put himself off to sleep, I sometimes sit and watch him cause I'm so amazed by it! LOL.

Hope my ideas help....

When DD was younger like 6 months old we did this night routine-
Dinner
Bath
Walk
Into her room and read the same two books each night
BF then bed gradually putting her to bed more awake each night until she was wide awake after her feed into bed.

Now she's 18 mths old she wants me to put her straight into bed I hardly get a cuddle now :cry: the best thing we ever did was put a few books in her bed, so she reads before she falls asleep then when she wakes up and she loves the time to herself.

I don't think theres anything wrong with your bub crying in their cot if your there with them patting, singing or something. Sometimes they need to cry to just let out some energy and wind down before falling asleep.

Good luck - it will happen!

My DS is 4 months and is now moving towards self settling. I'm in the process of reading Sheyne Rowley's Dream Baby (all 800 pages of it ....phew!) and although it is geared towards 6 month to 2 year olds I have implemented a few of the techniques and things have improved a lot already. Half the book is dedicated to communication and play as she believes that this is important for good sleep, and the other half is about sleep and how to repair common problems. At her suggestion I reintroduced swaddling together with a firm tuck-in and set up a consistent routine and saw immediate results. Although I still do a bit of rocking to get DS drowsy (the amount of rocking has now decreased significantly) I can now put him to bed and even though he usually opens his eyes when laid down he can now put himself to sleep. Not only that he has gone from waking up 3 or 4 times during the night to once or twice.

Santosha, just remember that your dd is an individual and what works for others may not work for your bub. she sounds a lot like my ds2. he is a bit of a sensitive soul, and every attempt to get him to self settle has not worked. we are just plugging along doing what we know works the best for him, which is usually a breastfeed and rock until he is dead asleep, then i put him down in bed.
i guess the difference is that i have gone through this before (with ds1) so i know that it all works out in the end- some of them just take longer than others iykwim? ds1 really is a great sleeper now, but i have to tell you that he didn't sleep through until 14 months old and i don't think he really started self settling till about 18 months or so?
just hang in there, and most importantly don't 'do your head in' over it and start comparing your baby to others, as i have found that this simply gets you nowhere except way more frustrated!
i tried a few things out of the NCSS, but tbh none of it really worked on my boys. i do think it's a good book though and has some good ideas in it.
i promise you, your dd will get there in the end..but by the sounds of the other night i think she may not be ready yet and it may be the best thing to just give her a little more time.

Good to know there has been some success in here... maybe I need to try the patting thing?

We have always had the dinner, bath, (or bath, dinner) quiet play, b/feed, read a book routine... have had her in sleeping bag since about 3mths (swaddled over the sleeping bag for a few months) and she still needs to be rocked most nights.

She is quite adept at standing in the bag now... and also adept at pulling things through into the cot from the change table (cloth wipes, nappies, covers, anything)... we put her down and tell her its time for sleeping, close the curtains, give her a kiss and walk out and close the door... it'll be all quiet for 10 mins or so then she'll crack it, we go in there to find her surrounded by a colourful swathe of wipies, nappies, covers, liners... :rolleyes:

We do the tuck-in as well... she still twists straight around...

Basically we're at a point now where if she is moved into horizontal position anywhere near her cot she just loses the plot. Sigh!

Kat - Hope my response isn't too delayed

Re the Grandparents and Child care points - I ensure my Mum follows my bedtime routine pretty much exactly, then DS knows what to expect and goes to sleep without too much fuss. (assuming Ivy's grandparents are accomodating)

Re childcare, I asked this question when I put Baileys name down at 3 centres and they all said they will do what you ask re your babies routine - when I said "What if he takes 30 mins to get to sleep" they said they are happy to do what the babies and parents are comfortable with, so you'd be surprised

Cant offer you any tips re the self settling part, have tried it here with no success, just ended up with one very upset baby and a heartbroken Mummy so went immediately back to rocking/cuddling to sleep, I figure I will soon miss these moments as its all flying by so quickly :) But I so get that sometimes you just need them to go to sleep, as Mummy needs some Mummy time!!

My DD is 16 and a half months and is rocked to sleep (in the rocking chair in her room) most nights. We never used to, when she was wrapped she didn't need rocking but somewhere along the line we have ended up rocking. I can't quite remember how it happened! But I too quite enjoy it..some nights not tho when it takes an hour! Some nights I do have to put her in her cot and walk away cause I get a little frustrated and she will whinge for just a bit and I've calmed down gone back in and she's asleep!! Maybe she can jsut do it on her own?

I'm so glad I found this thread! It's made me feel better already!

My DD is nearly 10 months old, but she's in a hip brace, so unable to crawl, stand up, etc. so doesn't really tire herself out to self settle. She loves to be held before she goes to sleep and quite frankly, it's just heaven to have that happen. But I started to think I was doing the wrong thing, when my mother and child clinic frowned upon it and suggested we started the whole, put her in the cot and leave the room.

So I tried it. One afternoon, I put DD in her cot once she had almost fallen asleep, and instead of drifting off totally, she woke up, and started playing - she skipped the sleep altogether!!

I didn't know if babies will just start self settling on their own, but the advice in here is sort of indicating that its possible, so thanks. DD loves In The Night Garden and has fallen asleep in front of that a few times, and she really is quite a good sleeper, once she's fallen asleep. It's not like she falls asleep and then we put her in the cot and she's awake again. I suppose she might change too, once the brace comes off and she can get comfortable on her own. But for now, I'll still enjoy the cuddle time!

Corelly.