drowsy but awake

MrsNJSwimmer

Sorry for being a post hog today, but I actually have 2 hands to type right now!

The prevailing theory on getting LOs to fall asleep on their own is putting them down "drowsy but awake"... at what age is this appropriate?  We still rock him to sleep b/c when he's tired, he cries and won't let you put him down, or he goes into full on mad screaming fit, which causes him to suck in more air and makes his gas, which is already bad, worse.   

mlvmd

This works 98% of the time for us at night.  About 50% for naps.  At night he normally falls asleep drinking his last bottle but as soon as I put him in his crib he wakes up again.  He will then rub his eyes with his fists for a few minutes then pass out.  If he hasn't had a bottle, he will not go down this easily.  Sometimes his gas is really bad and I will rub his belly while he is in his crib and that normally will get him to go to sleep.  I have to close my eyes when I do this though, because if he sees that mine are open he won't close his. 

Sofka

did not work for us until well after the 1st bday

QueSrah

It worked for us at 3 or 3.5 months. Though for the first few weeks I had to hover to help her keep the paci in her mouth until she could fall soundly asleep because she'd fuss when it fell out and she was still awake.  I just realized yesterday that I don't really give her the paci anymore and she still manages to fall asleep with out fussing most of the time.

I think this also coincided with her gas getting to be less of a problem.  When the gas was bad, she either had to be already asleep or we would spend 10 minutes rubbing her belly to help her work out the gas so she could relax enough to sleep.

Mrs.Ram

Month 3 was great for us - we could put her down drowsy but awake, and she would sleep like a champ. Month 4 everything turned around, and we still are not back to the easy days of month 3. I basically have to rock her to sleep, but I admit I haven't tried any formal methods of sleep training. Our nanny swears DD goes down with minimal crying for naps, but I have yet to experience this.

tracy042206

Ah yes, the holy grail of sleep - drowsy but awake.  If it didn't seem to work for so many others I would say it was a myth because I can tell you it never worked in this house.  I rocked #1 to sleep until she was 9mo old and too squirmy to let me do it, we then did CIO for 2 nights and she was good for night time sleep after that (she had been STTN since 5.5mo old).  #2 was a little different since I didn't always have time to rock her to sleep so she did learn to put herself to sleep most of the time at an earlier age (about 4.5mo).  Basically for #2 once she wasn't falling asleep on the bottle she just did it herself whereas #1 would have screamed and cried until I rocked her to sleep.  For #1 this wasn;t a big deal since I had the time and inclination to just rock her to sleep until she didn;t want it anymore.

CrunchOoEezyMama

We were able to start doing that around 9/10 months.