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February 2013 Moms
carriesu2003
member
How did you do it?
carriesu2003
member
For those of you who are able to put your LO down for naps and bedtime awake how did you do it? I am not emotionally capable of cry it out..yet. I just tried it and caved after 6min. What other options are there to get my baby to just lay down and go to sleep? For whatever reason Ivy fights her naps during the day to a ridiculous degree. She once went 8 hours without a nap! I spend most of my day rocking, swaying or feeding her to sleep (all bad habits). She is sleeping through the night most days but these naps are killing both of us. I'm also on a time crunch to get this figured out. I start a nanny share in Sept and the little boy in the share sleeps 90 min at very set times. A nanny won't be able to spend all day trying to get my baby to sleep. Oh and I have already read Healthy sleep habits and get that babies need to sleep often blah blah blah. I can't get her to do it. Any advice?
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Re: How did you do it?
We started 'practicing' when she was really young, like 2 weeks old. She didn't CIO at all, but we'd put her down really drowsy but still awake. Sometimes she fell asleep, sometimes she didn't. If she didn't, we'd pick her up and actually put her to sleep before we put her down. We did that basically every day. She got better and better at it.
Naps were hard work for us, but now we're pros. At first, I'd get her to nap however she could, but after she got a little older, I'd take her up to my bed and lay her down. I laid next to her and basically put her soother back in every time she lost it and cried. I'd be pretty much in the bedroom the whole time she was trying to nap. Every once in a while, I'd have a successful day that I'd get her to nap no problem. After a while of doing this, I was able to leave her soother out after she actually fell asleep, and leave the room. Eventually, I was just able to lay her down, and leave. I'd go upstairs and put her soother in every time she cried.
Now, I'm comfortable letting her cry, and the most she's ever cried for is 25 mins, off and on. I was JUST about to go up too, and she stopped. She is 3 and a half months old and it took us 3 months to get to this point. It was a lot of work, but it really paid off.
We also started doing it when DS was pretty young and we'd set him down drowsy but not asleep. We also used the same sleep cues: binky, noise/music, and a swaddle (though we've been swaddle free for a while now) for naps and night time. I just tried to be really consistent so he would learn when it was time to sleep. Naps are 10 times harder than night sleep though. I usually have to do the "binky dance" for a while and I'll stroke his forehead or rub his tummy.
So the good thing is, he will fall asleep himself - however, my problem is I can't get him to stay asleep for naps. This morning he went down within 5 minutes yay! But then woke after 20 and had no interest in sleeping anymore.
I think it just takes time and honestly, sometimes I wonder if I really had anything to do with it or if I just got lucky. :P
This. I can't say I did anything in particular to get DS down DBA. It just seemed like as he got older, he would stop falling asleep while drinking his bottle, so I'd just set him in the crib. For a week or so, that didn't go well and we would have to settle him down to sleep by going back into the room once or twice. Then he just gradually got better and better at it until one day, he just did it himself and kept doing it. It's the one thing I got going for me, though, as far as sleep is concerned haha. Because DS is a cat napper all day and has yet to ever sleep through the night and he's almost five months old.