how to train baby to fall asleep on his/her own?

Parenting and Education (Other) General Parenting
1

hi mummies… i have a 4mth old baby girl having troubles to fall asleep on her own. she need to be carried and patt and walked around to fall asleep… as she’s getting heavier, i doubt i can do this everyday, it’s very tiring. i introduced spring cot to her one month ago, but she refused to be in spring cot in evening time, need to carry and patt her.

i tried cry it out method before and it doesn’t work for me as i will feel very heart pain to see her cries…

can share your experience on how to train baby to sleep on her own? thanks!

2

I ruined my daughter, she has to hold my hand to fall asleep and I do not know how to stop it. She is 19 months today, I feel horrible telling people that I let her do that. But I do not like when she cries, she can cry for hours and never stop and I do not know how to stop her from holding my hand. If I don’t give her my hand she just stays up and if she is tired she cries and cries and cries and cries and I tried waiting it out. I tried introducing a “lovie” she still wants me. I have tried for so long to stop it and nothing worked. So I am very interested in an answer. This is my very first daughter and I know how horrible it is that she needs to hold my hand to fall asleep.

3

We too have the same problem with our DS. He would bite his lower lips and needs our hand till he falls asleep, we then put him in his crib. But if he would wake up then we bring him with us on our bed. I know this is a big NO NO, but we are unable to stay awake much since we both work fulltime. So for our sanity and to avoid the 3am cries we go this route. I would love to hear what other parents are doing.

4

I am just so relieved that I am not the only one . :smiley:

5

Please don’t blame yourselves!
I have 2 children and both have very different sleeping patterns. My daughter rarely slept more than 4 hours a night until she was 6 years old. I tried everything and nothing worked. I lived on the couch and she sat in her swing watching videos while I slept at night. Bad bad mom, but that is the only way I could cope. My son naturally from birth slept 10-12 hours per night. I am the same mom and both children have the same parents. These problems wiil change eventually, as my daughter got older she learned to behave and let me sleep at night. One day you will look back and think it really wasn’t that bad. As for guilty I have that too, my daughter would wake up screaming when she did fall asleep in her crib (or I put her there). She would bite her tongue and the crib would be covered in blood. I found out years later that she was having seizures in her sleep and that might be why she had such poor sleep habits. Would things have been different if I have insisted the Doc listen to me when I was worried about her sleep and biting? Maybe but I can’t change the past.

I do suggest the book “The no cry sleep solution” by Elizabeth Pantley for advice.

6

My son is just over a year old and we’re still working on getting him to fall asleep on his own. The first time he goes to bed he doesn’t have any problem (usually) going to sleep. When he wakes up though, which he does at least 2-3 times overnight, he absolutely refuses to go back into his own bed. Most of the time I don’t even have to feed him when he wakes up. If I don’t get him when he starts crying, he’ll scream for what seems like forever!!! His Dr. suggested going in to check on him at increasing intervals, to soothe him, but not pick him up. We tried that, and he ended up screaming for an hour and a half straight!!! I’m not one that likes to listen to screaming babies, especially my own. So instead, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, I bring him to our bed, and he falls asleep again almost immeadiately. I know, I know…we’re just making it harder for ourselves…but this way I get more sleep, so I can be a happy Mommy instead of a sleep deprived one!

7

My 18mo daughter sleeps with me in my bed and I’m not thinking to sleep train her just yet because my husband works at night. I breastfeed her to sleep. I think I’m just gonna be lazy for this one as she is my first child :blush: I hope I dont spoil her that much :blush: I’m officially a selfish and a bad mom too…
Most of the time she will be too tired from our activities she will sleep on her own.

8

There is nothing wrong with your baby needing extra security and comfort of sleeping next to you during the night, he is still very young, and developmentally it is far better for him then CIO ( crying it out) , which can cause serious withdrawal and anxiety problems. Babies will gradually progress towards falling asleep on their own, if you give them an opportunity to do so, however forcing them into it would just result in anxiety and insecurity. However if he is falling asleep well in your bed ( cosleeping) you probably will end up with secure attached and happy baby, that will be ready to proceed to next developmental milestone of sleeping on his own at the time that is right for him. My daughter was like that, if she needed to be with us when going to sleep we made sure either my Husband or I were there for her. We never did CIO, but pretty early in her life we started simple routine, – put her in her own bed, pray with her, sing her a song and go to our bed ( or go to living room if that is for a nap). She felt secure, knowing that if she needed it, we will meet her needs, so she did not mind to progress towards next developmental milestone of going to sleep on her own.

And even now when we travel to new place, or move, we let her chose whether she wants to sleep with us or fall asleep on her own, usually after a couple of times sleeping with us, she wants to go to her own bed ( which is by the way always in our room, as according to a few British Studies that I was reading, it is better for babies to co-sleep in the same room with their parents till about 5 years old, and it works great for us as well, as when she wakes up at night to use the potty or wants a little snack, we are there and can meet her needs immediately, and she does not have a need to cry, which makes her happy and confident toddler, very easy to manage).

From my experience , just go gently, develop secure attachment, and then let your baby launch out so to speak and explore sleeping on their own without needing to fight for their security.

Hope this helps

9

Sorry to say, try CIO. When both of you are ready. on a day BOTH of you are EXTREMELY EXHAUSTED. I was not a believer.

DH did it when I passed out one day and took her half an hour the first time. (she was about six months old) 15-20 minutes the following week and then, she did it. Now, she goes to bed by herself at 18months and 99% of time she is peaceful and happy and says night-night or bye-bye.

10

I think that’s amazing. How again you do it? Do you mind to explain more in detail?

11

I could not handle the cry it out approach, but felt my (and I!!) daughter needed something quite structured to help work towards better sleep. We found that the “Baby Whisperer” approach worked well for us.
For younger children, you have to ‘Shush-pat’ them until they fall asleep if possible rather than picking up and allowing to drop to sleep in your arms. This was OK, but didn’t really lead to great sleep until she was a little older. I think about 6 months, when I tried the ‘Pick up, Put down’ method. Rather than just leaving the baby to cry, you pick them up and sooth them, but then immediately they are settled (and this has to be really quick), you put them straight back down into the bed. Often at first, my DD was crying again on the way back to the bed already. So then you pick up again and start again. The first time we did this, I must have picked her up about 100 times at least, it took nearly an hour, but I kept going and eventually she fell asleep. The second day, maybe 30 minutes, then 20 and then 10. It took about 5 days and she was settling in about 5 minutes. We also found it helpful to have some soft toys and comforters in her bed, and she picked a toy rabbit out that she now associates with hugging and chewing his arms as she goes to sleep.

The first time i tried PU/PD was the middle of the night. What a stupid mistake!! :rolleyes: It’s the last time that you want to be trying it, so after that I made most of the efforts for day time naps, and then her night time sleep just followed on from this. You just have to be persistent and really believe that if you keep going longer than the baby then it will be better for all of you. This is not a complete ‘no cry’ method, as the baby does cry when you put them down, but you are there to comfort immediately, so I do not feel there are any issues about the attachment concerns from the CIO approach. Later, as she got older, we learned to wait a few minutes if she woke in the night before going in to her, as often she was better at putting her self back to sleep than we were. It would take much longer if we disturbed her. So, not really CIO but just seeing if she really needed us or not.

It worked well for us - at nearly 2, DD is great at going to bed for naps or at night-time. She still loves to have her rabbit with her at bedtime. She will happily go to bed and chat or sing to the rabbit as she drops off to sleep.

Hope that helps - good luck!

Oh - there is a good forum on the baby whisperer techniques: http://www.babywhispererforums.com/index.php

12

I didnt do the CIO method until my son was 5 and half mths olds. Make sure your baby is well fed as I also increased his solids to half a cup 3 times a day which sounds like a lot but he actually lost weight at our last check up! It only took us 3 nights and he now sleeps through and that was 2 mths ago. For us CIO meant after he had gone down at night so we didn’t just let him CIO when he first went down but anytime he work during the night. Good luck. :slight_smile:

13

The only method that worked for my daughter was the CIO method. We tried other methods but nothing else was as effective and the whole family desperately needed to sleep. Need to make sure she is well fed before she goes to sleep, the room is completely darkened and you know her different cries (eg. if she is in pain). There is a specific cry that babies make when they are crying down.

We also followed the The New Contented Little Baby Book which lays out a daily sleep/eating routine. Took about a month to get my daughter to fall asleep on her own. At first listening to the crying was painful; the crying goes through series of increasing peaks - when you reach the point you cannot handle the crying any more, this is usually the peak (about 10 mins) - do not go into the child’s room, the crying will decrease from this point on.

14

my son is 3 months now. before he cry and try not to sleep. i try to train him to sleep on his own. still i can’t do that but now every night i keep him on the bed same time and breastfeed him . soon he fall asleep with out crying.

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15

Just like us, babies are individuals – we learn that when we are giving babies an opportunity to learn reading, math, encyclopedic knowledge at the young age, when we learn to communicate with baby and understand his or hers clues and signs, and this goes for sleep requirements too.

It may help (or not, if you are suffering from sleep deprivation and just wish that baby “would sleep thorough the night”) to realise that in most infant sleep studies, ‘all night’ is defined as five hours.

If you are thinking that even five hours uninterrupted sleep would be a dream come true, there are some gentle strategies you can try to help your baby, and you, to sleep better. These are just some ideas, and I hope these would be of help:

1.	Know the signs – None of us like being kept awake when we are craving sleep, so rather than waiting until your baby is ‘past it’, put her to bed as soon as she shows sleepy signs such as becoming quiet, yawning, making “jerky” movements, losing interest in people and toys, staring blankly (Baby Whisperer author Tracy Hogg calls it a "one mile stare") and fussing. If you miss this window of opportunity, your baby is likely to become grumpy and find it difficult to settle.
2.	Introduce bedtime rituals – bedtime routines can become cues that help even tiny babies wind down and become conditioned to fall asleep. Some ideas: give her a warm relaxation bath just before bedtime ( Tip- wrap and cuddle baby dry in a warm towel so she isn’t upset by her startle reflex). Change her in cozy pajamas and read a few minutes of story or poems, with dim lights. Settle him comfortably with a cozy blanket or cuddle that they go to sleep with. Do a few minutes of rocking and cuddling together, dim the lights and put a selection of soft classical music … There many ideas and you can discover a routine that would work best for you!
3.	A soothing touch – Research from Miami University showed that infants and toddlers who were massaged daily for one month, for 15 minutes prior to bedtime, fell asleep more easily by the end of the study. There are many books out there to learnabout infant massage, it is simple, bounding  and beneficial. 
4.	Soothing sounds – The calming, repetitive sounds of traditional lullabies recall the ‘womb music’ your baby heard before birth (your heartbeat, and fluids whooshing through the placenta). Baby music that incorporates elements such as the rhythm of the maternal heartbeat or ‘white noise’ has remarkable soothing effects, especially if played continuously through the night. Our favorite is the ocean wave soothing sound -- a small sound machine we kept in our bedroom till we moved to the beach and have the real ocean doing the job now!
5.	Soothing aroma - There is a number of essential oils that are safe to use for your baby's massage before the bedtime or to put in vaporizer. ( you can order on line some pre-made massage blends that are safe for babies, and generally when you put oil in vaporizer, put just one or two drops max…) here are some ideas for the oils: lavender ( excellent calming and sleep aid), Mandarin essential oil (soothing and uplifting oil. It has balancing and stimulating properties and is also known to support emotional balance. This oil will support healthy sleep patterns and relax fretful babies) ;Neroli essential oil (supports healthy circulation throughout the body, helping to soothe the baby's spirit); Chamomile essential oil (imparts a sense of calm and relaxation. Chamomile has been studied for its calming properties - specifically in babies. (Weizman, Z., Alkrinawi, S.Goldfarb, D., and Bitran, C. “ J Pediatr. 1993;122(4):650-652.)) These are just some ideas and you can get in depth information in books on aromatherapy.
6.	Rock a bye baby – The motion of a rocking chair or being carried in a sling as you walk will lull baby to sleep. So will a special-purpose baby hammock – and as baby moves and arouses during the night, her movements will start the hammock rocking. We used hammock with our second child and love it!
7.	All snuggled up – The startle reflex, a primitive survival reflex that produces spontaneous, jerky movements, even in sleep, can be disturbing. You can provide a sense of security by swaddling your newborn – wrapping him firmly in a gauze or muslin sheet (in summer) or a soft shawl in winter. Gradually wrap more loosely and discard the wrap as this reflex disappears (by around three months). Our boy is not swaddled anymore, but every night when he goes to bed he holds tightly and securely his "swaddle shawl", he just feels secure with it and loves holding it with his hands when he goes to sleep.
8.	Cut caffeine – If you are breastfeeding, caffeine can create a vicious circle: You drink coffee (or tea or cola) to give you a hit, baby gets a boost of stimulant through your milk- and becomes restless. Newborns are particularly vulnerable to caffeine: A newborn may take up to ninety seven hours to get rid of caffeine so the effects will be accumulative.
9.	Daytime feeds – Tiny tummies need frequent refills, but soon your baby will start sleeping at least one longer stretch between feeds. If baby sleeps more than four hours between feeds during the day, it is reasonable to GENTLY unwrap him and offer a feed, then he might save his longer sleep for night -time. However, be patient if he is not ready to alter his pattern.
10.	Try a top up feed – Whatever time your baby was last fed, gently offer a feed just before you go to bed yourself (don’t wake him, he will suck in his sleep) and, with luck, his longer sleep may coincide with yours. Try it a few times and you can master it pretty well
11.	Teach her day from night – Teach baby the difference between night and day by keeping the lights low and attending to him quietly during night feeds. Save play and chatter for daytime.
12.	Do not disturb – Avoid waking baby during night feed times by changing the diaper either before or half way through a feed, not when baby is all 'groggy' and full. If baby is falling asleep during feeds, so only having a short feed, try changing the nappy half way through, then offering the other breast.
13.	Falling asleep on the breast is one of the easiest ways for most babies to settle. This is due to hormones released while your baby feeds but if you are concerned about it becoming a habit, alternate feeding with other sleep cues 
14.	Share sleep – Research shows that mothers and babies who sleep together (within reach of each other, not necessarily in the same bed) share the same sleep cycles, so these mothers get more sleep overall. 
15.	A little bit of mummy – it’s not exactly a substitute for you, but if you slip your own soft, unwashed tee-shirt over baby’s mattress, she will be comforted by your familiar smell as she sleeps.
16.	Stop the Clock – Simply knowing how long you are awake can be enough to make you too tense to get back to sleep, or it may encourage you to rush your baby and make him feel anxious. If you see your baby's waking as a genuine need, it could help you to enjoy this precious cuddle time: feel the softness of his skin, breathe in his delicious smell and snuggle!

Hope some of these will help :slight_smile:

If you are interested in resources (articles/websites/books) for research-based information on infant sleep, night time parenting, baby crying, need for nourishment and comfort at night, and physiological body and brain responses to ‘controlled crying,’ ‘cry it out,’ or ‘sleep training’ methods, as well psychological conditioning studies on learned helplessness (which occurs to babies whose care-givers utilize these methods). Here is an excellent collection of resources that you can study: http://www.drmomma.org/2009/12/sleep-training-review-of-research.html

Oh, and I second lzp11 on the “Babywhisperer” recommendation - I personally liked the book a lot and there were a lot of great tips and routine ideas, there were a few thing that I disagreed with, but not fundamental enough and I just skipped a few parts :slight_smile:

Hope you mommies will get a better sleep :yes:

16

lzp11> thanks i’ll try out your methods.

skylark> thanks for your info :biggrin: the problem we faced here is, how to let bb fall asleep by their own. not bb refuses to sleep. i read bb whisperer too. still trying to figure out how to introduce the routine to my bb… now her sleeping time is in a mess :blink:

17

I had no idea how to teach my child to fall asleep alone, i tried many many things and nothing worked. Then someone told me about book that is all about sleeping and what’s important it is short and everythin is present step by step. The book with title “How to teach a baby to fall asleep alone” actually it’s an e-book and I get it from www.parental-love.com I could recommend it for every parent who have the same problem