At Caroline's 2 month appt last night, the ped asked if I'm still feeding or rocking her to sleep. She told me that she needs to learn to self-soothe. Of course, I'm all for this, but it's not working. If I put her to bed not sleeping it leads to crying. It seems like everything I'm reading says they should do this around 3-6 months. Is she just too young? If not, why is the ped telling me that at 2 months? It's that's the case, this really sucks because I have to go back to work in 3 weeks and can't keep playing these games with her every night. I've been really trying to get her on schedule this past week and it's just not working. I think another month of maternity leave would really help the situation, but that's just not an option.
Any suggestions?
Re: self soothing
I've always heard they can't really self-soothe until about 4 months. It's odd that your pedi told you to start now.
Sometimes I can put G down awake and he'll stare at his seahorse until he falls asleep, but if he cries I go and put his paci back in and talk to him/shush him. I try not to pick him back up unless he doesn't calm down. I feel like it's working because he's been going to sleep on his own without crying maybe a third of the time. But most of the time he does need me to come back in. Usually I can just hold his hand and shush him and he'll go on to sleep, but then sometimes I have to pick him up and rock him to sleep. I feel like he's still too young to cry it out.
I'm a moron. I read both this and Happiest Baby on the Block while PG and I completely forgot that I should be referencing them. I have been doing the logs and trying to establish patterns based on those logs, but it doesn't seem to be working yet.
Totally!!