Sleep

One of the biggest topics of conversation among new mums is sleep.  How much are you getting?  How is your baby sleeping?  Do you have a routine?  In the last week Henry has started self-settling in his cot for his day sleeps with little to no intervention from us.  This is a huge achievement especially considering for the first 13 weeks of his life he refused to sleep during the day unless he was in our arms.  While the cuddles were nice, it was exhausting and frustrating holding him for his sleeps because it meant that for half of the day I was essentially trapped under him.

It took us two weeks of persistence and consistency to get him to self settle.  We are still battling the cat naps (he wakes after one sleep cycle do doesn't get proper sleeps during the day, just naps) but I'm hoping that soon that will resolve too.

I thought I would share what we did to get him to self settle.  This might not work for everyone but it worked for us so I will share it in the hope that it works for you too.

When I was pregnant I was gifted "Save Our Sleep" by Tizzie Hall, a book that a few of my family and friends followed and said, while it was tough to implement it worked wonders.  I read through it and liked the idea of a structured, predictable routine to follow but didn't like the way she taught self settling as it was very similar to the "cry it out" method, which I don't like.  She recommends starting all of this pretty much from birth.  I also read a lot of other things saying that until a baby is around 12 weeks old there isn't much point starting formal sleep training as they are just too little. 

When he was about 6 weeks old I started implementing the Tizzie Hall routine, but was still rocking him to sleep and letting him sleep on me.  It was also around this time that we stopped co-sleeping/bed sharing and Henry started to sleep in a co-sleeping cot next to the bed.  We are still following the Tizzie Hall routine timings though he doesn't tend to stick to them very well, especially since he catnaps during the day, but it gives us a loose routine to follow.

I utilised a few methods to teach self-settling.  Tizzie Hall gives a minimum amount of time to leave a baby to self-settle before going in to settle them.  We followed this guideline.  We used an elephant toy which plays lullabies and vibrates, and also sometimes a dummy.  This is our method...

We put him into his cot, clean nappy, fed and awake but showing tired tired signs.  Tuck him, pat him on the head, turn on the elephant, and leave the room with the light off and the door closed (or you can leave it open a crack to he can still hear you but our doors are not particularly sound proof so it was ok to close them).

We give him 10 minutes to protest.  If his cries become distressed then we would go in sooner.  The few times this happened it was because he needed to burp.  If, after 10 minutes has passed he has not settled (meaning he is still crying, if he was awake but not crying we would leave him) then we go in and give him the dummy and some shooshing.  This was always done sitting down next to the cot, not leaning over it so that he didn't think we would going to pick him up.  If after 20 minutes with the dummy and the shooshing he was still not looking like he was going to fall asleep, pick him and take him out for 10 minutes, then try again - though this never happened as we timed his tired signs well.

After a week or so of doing this, he stopped needing the dummy so much and after about 8 minutes he would stop crying and settle of to sleep.

By the end of the second week, half the time he wouldn't cry at all, and the other half of the time it was only a few minutes of crying.

Unfortunately he still needs help settling for his night time sleep but I'm hoping that another couple of weeks will see him self-settling at night time too.

I hope this helps some of you.  Feel free to ask me questions in the comments if you have any.

Good luck!