Putting baby to sleep

Toronto2012

My son is four weeks old, my daughter is 18 months. Right now she is in daycare full time, but starting in two weeks I will be home with both of them. For those who are alone during the day, how do you get your youngest to fall asleep? I am totally afraid of him getting distracted and overtired because my oldest is making tons of noise and I can't leave her to get him some place quiet where he can relax and fall asleep. Very interested to know what your experience or advice is! TIA

lana22

my younger is 2.5 months and older is almost 19 months. i rely very heavily on the swing and walks in the stroller. i'll also time outings so that our car ride to the park/mall/playdate is timed with when LO is ready for a nap. 

for his first nap i swaddle him, rock him a bit and then put him in his crib, and he's been falling asleep on his own. i must catch him before he's overtired, though, which is usually within an hour after waking up. it's much harder if i miss his window.

today my older son is at the babysitter, so i did the same thing for his second nap and it also worked. basically i'm trying to get him to fall asleep on his own as much as possible, so that soon i won't have to rely on the swing or holding him for a long period of time. i'm doing the same "nap routine" that i had with my older son (brief story, rock, turn on seahorse) and hoping he catches on quickly.

i let my son make as much noise as he wants while baby is sleeping, but trying to transition him to crib now so that he will have better quality sleep down the road. good luck! 

lkm2006

The good thing about young babies, is they usually fall asleep anywhere no matter what is going on.

My youngest is 3 1/2 months and I get him to sleep by rocking/holding him.  DS1 is usually running through the house like a crazy man, but I guess DS2 is so used to it he is still able to go to sleep.  Once he's asleep, I move him to his crib and then I do try and keep things more quiet (we move out to the den and shut the baby's bedroom door).

If I'm out and about, DS2 will just nap in my arms (whether it's at a restaurant or someone's house).  

ETA: I don't mind holding/rocking to sleep.  I never put DS1 to be awake so I don't really plan on doing that with this baby.  As he gets older and it's not as easy to get him asleep, I would probably get markers/playdough/etc out and let DS1 play with that.. or turn on an episode of Mickey to buy me some time.  

Toronto2012

thanks for you responses! I have two weeks left to "practice", so hopefully things will go relatively smoothly when my oldest stays home from daycare :-)

MrsNyberg09

I make sure both of my kids are able to sleep through anything. I have yappy lap dogs and so I have to make sure they can sleep through it. Dh also listens to the tv really loud. Ds has never had trouble sleeping until we lived with my aunt who always had to be quiet.