Self soothing

Any tips my 7month old gets rocked to sleep every night - once asleep generally does sleep through the night but I really want to get into the habit of teaching her how to self soothe and go to sleep herself, however when I put her in her next to me to self soothe she just screams and gets so worked up to the point she’s hyperventilating and my personal preference is I don’t like the cry it out method x

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One thing I read this week that stuck is add more sleep associations so when your rocking also do other things like bum patting and/or singing a specific song, specific sleep phrase, white noise. Then when you’re trying to put her to sleep without rocking you can do the other things. I guess it’s a much more gradual way for them to learn to settle as you can then reduce the support they need to nod off x

It can be really helpful to offer your baby soothing to calm them down ready for sleep, but without putting them to sleep. I also rocked my girls to sleep, but now I put them up right on my shoulder, they lean on me and cuddle and I sing quietly to them stroking their head. I do this in a dark room with white noise on. Then place them down when I can feel they’re calm, they also start their own self soothing behaviours as part of this. If they get a little worked up after putting them down I do it on repeat until they’re settled enough to send themselves off. I sometimes let them go to sleep on the bottle too. All babies like different things so find what works best for you. In the day one of my girls likes gentle play to soothe her off, we played quiet “peekaboo” and she falls asleep! And the other gets really vocal and likes s little chat. I read it’s individual on how a baby release stress before getting ready to sleep.

I do the same as Natalie, and have done for a few weeks now, I have just been slowly reducing how much I help if that makes sense. Like beforehand the cuddle would be until she's pretty much asleep, but now just just give her a quick cuddle and pop her down, she doesn't necessarily go to sleep any faster, but she can lay in her bed by herself for a lot longer now! I just sit right by her cot so she knows I'm there :)

Have you considered sleep training? I used to hear folk asking this and assumed that this meant crying it out. It doesn’t! Check out nights.with.nat on Instagram. Nat has completely transformed our sleep! We genuinely can’t believe the difference in the space of only a few days! ☺️

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