Where is her 12 Week *Magical* change??

**sweetpea678** · April 27th, 2009, 09:37 AM

Ella-bear,

I used mine till she was 8 months old and 7.4kilos in the instructions it says to 15 kilos on the spring mine has then can get a heavy duty one. I have an amby hammock, shame you not near me could of lent mine to see if it worked.

**bubno.3** · April 27th, 2009, 10:26 AM

Hi

Wish i bought a hammock i think they look wondeful.

Im with the others please do what is best for you and bub.... if she needs your arms to sleep well so be it.... you know what i did when Ali was that little... he fall asleep i my arms and then wake in cot but if i kept my hand on him and just kept patting he would fall asleep once again then i could quietly walk away. Im talking 5 6 7 8 weeks of age.

Now Alistair is 9mths and he falls asleep with bottle in cot but if he doesnt want the milk he wont take the bottle...

I hope it gets better for you

Cheers bubno.3

**bubno.3** · April 27th, 2009, 10:34 AM

Try wrapping your little one again which way are you wrapping ??? Arms down the side of bub or wrapping in the way the arm are covered but there up near her face? This works so well as theyre secure but still move their arms and have their hand near their face yet the wrap stops the reflex startle.. Hey i still use this wrap style with my 9 mth old on the odd occassion when he is soooo tired but just cant settle.... it works nearly everytime.

You can find the wrapping styles on line thats where i found it but i havent the link sorry

i hope this helps

**~Gee_Whizzy~** · April 27th, 2009, 12:24 PM

Try wrapping your little one again which way are you wrapping ??? Arms down the side of bub or wrapping in the way the arm are covered but there up near her face? This works so well as theyre secure but still move their arms and have their hand near their face yet the wrap stops the reflex startle.. Hey i still use this wrap style with my 9 mth old on the odd occassion when he is soooo tired but just cant settle.... it works nearly everytime.

You can find the wrapping styles on line thats where i found it but i havent the link sorry

i hope this helps

I have tried both methods and she fights it all the way and only calms down once she's free! - She can be quite stubborn

**sweetpea678** · April 27th, 2009, 12:40 PM

my dd has never been wrapped, the mw did at the hospital and she screamed till they unwrapped her. She is also a thumb sucker hence why I think she never liked being wrapped.

**~Gee_Whizzy~** · April 27th, 2009, 05:19 PM

sweetpea - glad to hear my bubs not the only one who doesnt like being wrapped - everyone has said to me "just keep wrapping until she gets used to i" - hmmm...i've been trying since she was 4 weeks and it ain't changing!

**sweetpea678** · April 27th, 2009, 06:00 PM

All bubs are different, my first was wrapped till 6 months, second dd was sort of wrapped still at 2, she used to hold her blankie and wrap herself up like a sausage lol. but i stoped tightly wrapping her at 6 month because she went into a hip brace but i actually had to wrap her arms in till she was well over one, she would get them out but would not go down unless wrapped in lol.

And this little one as I said hated it from the start, but likes to be snuggled in carriers lol.

I hope your bub settles for you soon.

**Arcadia** · April 28th, 2009, 09:18 PM

Hi EllaBear...I think the only thing magical about 12 weeks is that bubs starts to notice what you're doing. They're suddenly so clever, and respond to the routines you create. For us, this happened negatively, with DD realising that sleep and boob were the best, and sleep minus boob was a no go! This meant DD would wake up everytime I placed her in her cot (yes, at every feed in the night too) and secondly because she started waking every hour through the night looking for a boob to resettle. I was a wreck. What started as a lovely thing suddenly wasn't so lovely.

So, at 12 weeks I had to make some pretty dramatic changes to the way I was doing things. I have included what I did in case you want some practical tips, but as the other wise BBers has said, first you have to decide if its a problem for YOU. I struggled with this for a while, because I felt so much pressure from the MCHN and the idea of what I *should* be doing, but in the end actively changing things actually made me feel more in control and less like things were spiralling into a sleepless nightmare.

So....this is what I did.

Step 1: STOP feeding to sleep! I swapped feeds to the start of her cycle (yes, a feed, play, sleep routine). I instead rocked her to sleep or used the sling. This took only a few days for her to get the idea that feeding and sleep don't go together. I also had to wake her up as she was feeding.

Step 2: Experiment with ways of soothing DD in her cot. Now this one was HARD. Of course we are all about gentle parenting, and no-cry solutions, so this took some patience and a lot of picking her up and trying something new. I tried patting, rocking the whole frame of the cot, but found holding her hands and placing my cheek to hers and humming into her ear, she stopped crying instantly. I had to do this over quite a few days so she was only crying for a short spurts as I tried to find out our no-cry solution to settling in the cot.

Step 3: Put DD to sleep in the cot ALL THE TIME. I had to stay home for a few days and stop using the sling etc.

Step 4: Put DD to sleep in the cot when she shows tired signs. When she cries comfort her, but stop BEFORE she falls asleep. So its a real start-stop approach. Start comforting when she cries and stop when she stops. This took persistance but it means DD learnt that she was ok, I was ALWAYS there and she could fall asleep on her own.

Step 5: know the difference between whinging and crying and try and ignore the whinging. Now most people would complain if there were put to bed without any say in it, and my DD does whinge a little sometimes (and some days a lot), but its like a grizzle and stops after a few minutes or so, and might start again. I call it her sleep story, but I am hovering like a hawk until she falls alseep to make sure I am right there as soon as she cries.

Soo...that's it. It felt a little bit harder on her than I ever thought I would be. But she never cried for more than 20 seconds at a time during this process and was ALWAYS comforted, and the results have been phenomenal. I used to spend 40 mins plus every day just to settle her for each day sleep. Now I sing her a song, put her in her sleeping bag and pop her in the cot. She is generally asleep within 5 minutes. Her naps have gone from 30mins only to up to 2.5 hours.

I hope this helps