How many mamas need to "help" LO's to sleep?
VPGIRL06
member
I feel like half my day is helping my LO get some sleep...anyone else have a newborn that just always seems to need some help getting to sleep?
DD will fall asleep in the sling on her own, but obviously being that close plus movement when I'm walking helps. She'll fall asleep once i rock her if she's swaddled, and then needs help again when she wake up from that second sleep cycle to be rocked back into the next sleep cycle.
How many other moms are currently doing this? What about you whose LO's just seem to fall asleep/stay asleep on their own..what are you guys doing? my LO is 8 weeks old. Night time isn't bad, a bath, a bottle and some rocking...if it's dark out she'll fall asleep on her own drowsy but if it's light out i need to rock her until she's asleep.
Little Riley-our first little girl coming March 1st, 2013 (or sometime around there;)
Re: How many mamas need to "help" LO's to sleep?
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My LO is 5 weeks and at her 2 week appt the pedi said the exact same thing. When we told him how we have to rock her to a complete sleep before putting her down he said to do whatever works to get us some sleep.
There are plenty of days that I also feel like I spend much of the day trying to get LO to sleep (and days that he is really fussy so I spend much of the day keeping him happy/sleeping). Then he also has sleepy days when he falls asleep pretty quickly, though I always need to at least rock or bounce him a little bit.I think this is the norm for babies this age, I think most are not able to put themselves to sleep yet (though I am sure there are exceptions out there).
Night is a different story. At my bedtime (we haven't established a bedtime routine for him yet) all I do is swaddle, nurse while sleep sheep sings whale songs and he is out. Then he typically wakes a few times per night to eat and goes right back down.
ETA I have started working on the "put down drowsy" thing and he is doing ok with it, though it is hit and miss.
Unless mine is overtired (happens once or twice a week) she doesn't usually need any help.
I feed her then plop her in her crib and she just lies there until she falls asleep. Sometimes with a soother sometimes without.
She never needs me to replace her soother once she spits it out...and she intentionally spits it out before falling asleep (no idea why).
My only guess would be that's it's largely an ingrained personality thing and partly a 'trained' thing. She was a very easy going sleepy baby so we never got in the habit of rocking her and we never used a swing to get her to sleep.
In the early weeks she spent most the day sleeping on or near us on couch and spent every night since we got home in her crib. I originally had a guest bed put right beside the crib so I was lying beside her. I then moved the bed across the room. And now I spent the first part of the night in my room down the hall then go in for first feeding and spend the rest of the night on the bed in her room.
Since she's only ever slept in her crib at night she is very familiar with it. Since we never got in the habit of walking or rocking her she doesn't know to ask for it. She now takes most all her naps in the crib but will sleep in her car seat or stroller when we are out and her bouncy chair if we don't bring her up to her crib in time.
We did arms out swaddle early on but have just been putting her in a armless sleepsac the last 2 weeks. If she wakes she will put herself back to sleep unless it is time to feed, she wakes often because of reflux but just swallows and grumbles then sleeps unless it is time for an adjustment in meds then she needs some help.
Again I believe it's part personality and part what we have 'taught' her to do and I use 'taught' loosely as it's just what works for our baby.
5 weeks old and sleep is our biggest struggle-- I can only get him to go to sleep if basically he's already asleep when I put him down in the basinette. He falls asleep on his own in his swing all the time, but if I lay him down and try for intentional sleep, forget it.
I have to rock/shush him to sleep or he falls asleep nursing.
At night she resettles herself with littlw or no complaint so I'm not sure...
It all sounds very normal to have an 8 week old that needs help getting to sleep. My DS is able to fall asleep on his own for naps - I can put him in his RnP wide awake, swaddled with the sleep sheep and paci and if the timing is right, he'll fall asleep on his own. If he's over tired, I might need to rock him to drowsy, if he's not tired yet, I get him out and try again later.
Nighttime is different - I nurse and rock him until he's asleep and then put him down asleep.
My little man at 0-1-2
I have always nursed to sleep and I am proud of it. DD will get to sleep on her own when she is good and ready for it.
It's annoying sometimes when I need to get things done and I will complain, but it is what she needs and when I sit down to nurse her and we're cuddling so sweetly and then she is so blissfully asleep in my lap or next to me on the bed or in her crib while I do some housework, it isn't so bad to have to do it for her after all.
just must be temperament. like i said it seems very strange that she seems completely ok putting herself back to sleep at night when she wakes up but during the day she can't. Today I got a good long nap in the wrap (90 minutes) in the morning, a 3 cat naps (2 in the wrap, and one in the crib), and another hour with me holding her. Not her best day!
sometimes i wonder if she's faking me out during her sleeps..i think she's sleeping but really she's "resting" with her eyes closed...
i think I'm going to start tracking her day time sleep to find a pattern
I have had to rock DD to sleep every night and after all MOTN feedings (she's 8 weeks). Last week my mom actually started laying her on her back on the couch and she started falling asleep on her own.
Tonight was my first night really experimenting with this, but I put her in her crib with the Snugamonkey Sleepy Time toy (way in the corner... I'm a "nothing in the crib with baby" person and I'll be taking it out before we go to bed) and she was out like a light in just a few minutes. It would be amazing if this worked all of the time. I've very, very tired of rocking her to sleep and she won't be rocked to sleep when she is in daycare soon!
It seems like you have a lot of great tips already, but just something we did...
She started needing a lot of help to sleep at 5-6 weeks. It seemed like she would cry and then as soon as we picked her up she'd stop. I know babies can't manipulate, but I also think it was becoming a learned behavior. So I started picking her up when she cried, but putting her back in the crib as soon as she was calm again. I never let her CIO, but I didn't rock, soothe, etc. to get her to sleep, only to calm. It took a few days of a lot of up and down, but we rarely have to help her go to sleep anymore and she's sleeping through the night! She does have a very easy going temperment, so I know that helps, but it might be worth a try.