Crying self to sleep

TinaL99

Audrey has pretty much been on a Eat, Play, Sleep routine, which is something I was never able to get Stella on.  Sometimes she will eat again before she sleeps since I nurse to sleep a lot (for shame, lol!).  I've noticed that when it gets close to the time when Audrey would nap (~2 hours after her last wake up), I swaddle her(arms out) and rock her, but she just screams for about 5 minutes then passes out.  I'm not just leaving her to cry, I hold her tight and do some deep breathing as I rock her, but it's like she's just crying all of her energy out and then she naps pretty well.  It's heartbreaking to hear and I wonder if I should just give in and nurse her to sleep no matter what.  Thoughts?

Irisheyes1247

I'm not sure if you should nurse, if that would help, but it seems to me that if you are holding her and comforting her and she is still crying, she might just need to release the energy. When I was reading about sleep for C, one thing that stuck with me was there are generally 2 types of babies - those that cry to calm and those that cry to ramp up. It would appear she might just be a baby who needs that release to calm down? Of course, trying to nurse probably couldn't hurt things.

wendyj

It may be her way of calming herself down to sleep. Are you holding her when she's doing it? Maybe instead of nursing, you could try putting her down in her crib after going through the rest of her nap routine. If she's crying for longer than is typical, pick her up, if not, then you'll probably know that she's just decompressing.

jnk062602

Yup, I think some kids need to just blow off some steam.  You are there comforting her and she knows she is not alone, I see no problem in that.

Also, I don't think nursing to sleep is bad.  DD nursed to sleep when I put her down (selfishly since it was the fastest thing but I also liked seeing her all peaceful like that) and went down completely different for DH - he would feed her then change her and put her down wide awake.