Do you or your baby down awake

Bickey11 · June 2016

Are you able to put your baby down awake? If so, how did you do it? We're trapped in a pattern of him falling asleep while eating his late bottle and then when he doesn't fighting him to go to bed. We've tried CIO, which, we suck at. Routines. As well as just wrestling with a cranky baby for hours till he gives in and zonks out in our arms out in the bed and then we move him to his crib. Sine nights wet put him in and her just goes to sleep, but most nights it's a 1-2 hour battle

Mack2342 · June 2016

We put LO to bed awake. He used to fall asleep while nursing. Around the 3 month mark he would wake when I transferred him to RNP. I would just shush him and pat him and he eventually would fall asleep. Around 4 month mark I started just putting him to bed awake. Some night I would have to comfort but other nights he would just fall asleep. Around this time I started a bedtime routine and we became consistent with it. We still do same routine. When he fused I would go in and pat him, tell him it ok and leave. I would go back a few minutes later if he was still fussy. I guess I used a version of CIO. I was lucky in that he figured out this was bedtime pretty quickly he is pretty good with putting himself to sleep. He has his moments. I had trouble with him waking every hour and not putting himself back to bed. I used the Sleep Easy Solution book and it worked. We went from waking every hour to just once per night for feeding. I would check that book out. I thought it was great discusses several issues and breaks it down by ages. Helps up to 4 or 5 years of age. Less than $20 bucks. I felt it was well worth it.

virginiaunicorn11 · June 2016

^^You can get it from the library, too!

We we have only recently started putting our almost one year old down awake. We sucked at Cry It Out, and tried the Kim West method for a while (sleeplady.com). Eventually we had to just do Cry It Out. This started around 10-11 months. The first two nights were very hard (45 minutes of screaming, with us going in every 5-10 minutes).

I tried a million things before Cry It Out. What worked best for us was to choose a method that we could be 100% consistent with, and vow to stay 100% consistent for a week. Cry It Out was the only one we ended up being able to be consistent with.

Admittedly, my son still cries every night. The sleep books act like he should be happily farting rainbows by now. Instead, he usually cries for anywhere from 30 seconds to 7 minutes every. single. night. But he sleeps in much longer chunks now, and if I use the timer on my phone and use the time to pour myself a drink, it's bearable.

I do still go in and hold him for a while if it's longer than 7 minutes. The books say don't do that, and maybe that's why he's still crying each night. I'm just not able to let him get hysterical when a quick cuddle can do the trick. If he cries more than 7 minutes, it gets really bad, and personally, that's not right for my baby and me.

Good luck! Sleep issues are the worst!!

SmrBrd2012 · June 2016

Bickey11 said:

Are you able to put your baby down awake? If so, how did you do it? We're trapped in a pattern of him falling asleep while eating his late bottle and then when he doesn't fighting him to go to bed. We've tried CIO, which, we suck at. Routines. As well as just wrestling with a cranky baby for hours till he gives in and zonks out in our arms out in the bed and then we move him to his crib. Sine nights wet put him in and her just goes to sleep, but most nights it's a 1-2 hour battle

Any kind of sleep training, even if it's not CIO, will involve some kind of routine, in order to get baby to understand. I flip flopped with sleep training for months until I finally decided to do modified CIO with a written down routine with timing and everything to make sure I followed it as closely as possible. It only took us about ~3 days (and then similar techniques as needed for about a month but was less intense). He's a year now and he only cries maybe 5% of the time and it is so minimal.

SnarkasaurusRex · June 2016

Bubs goes down sleepy but awake. We have a pretty set bedtime routine - bath, baby massage with Aveeno nighttime lotion (the lavender one), bottle, story time, then lights off, sound machine on (white noise), and some snuggles in the rocking chair (sometimes if he's EXTRA snuggly I let him fall asleep there and transfer him to the crib after I've gotten my baby fix

). Honestly, I think I just got lucky with a really good sleeper, but I think the routine has worked really well for us. As soon as he hears that sound machine come on, his head plops down on my shoulder, thumb goes in his mouth, and he chills out.

TwizBeans · June 2016

SmrBrd2012 said:

Bickey11 said:

Are you able to put your baby down awake? If so, how did you do it? We're trapped in a pattern of him falling asleep while eating his late bottle and then when he doesn't fighting him to go to bed. We've tried CIO, which, we suck at. Routines. As well as just wrestling with a cranky baby for hours till he gives in and zonks out in our arms out in the bed and then we move him to his crib. Sine nights wet put him in and her just goes to sleep, but most nights it's a 1-2 hour battle

Any kind of sleep training, even if it's not CIO, will involve some kind of routine, in order to get baby to understand. I flip flopped with sleep training for months until I finally decided to do modified CIO with a written down routine with timing and everything to make sure I followed it as closely as possible. It only took us about ~3 days (and then similar techniques as needed for about a month but was less intense). He's a year now and he only cries maybe 5% of the time and it is so minimal.

This. Nothing will work if you aren't consistent and if you don't have a routine. I'd get in the habit of starting routines now and working on being consistent in lots of different areas because that's what babies and kids respond to. They need that structure.

Good luck. Just stick with it and it will work.

amp61470 · June 2016

LO is a great sleeper but I will say I notice that if I feed him purée right before I put him down he falls asleep quicker. He has never really cried much when I put him down so I am not sure if it's the food or just him but I find the feeding helps.

Do you or your baby down awake

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