#selfsettling

I’ve been lying on the nursery floor for 20min and he’s still not asleep.

A lot of people portray selfsettling means leaving your baby to cry. Not so. We didn’t decided to self settle until 3.5mths because prior to that our boy was a perfect sleeper. But at 3.5 months it all suddenly changes, he went through what they call sleep regression (a good blog for baby sleep hints http://www.babysleepsite.com/baby-sleep-patterns/4-month-sleep-regression/). He started waking every hour at night and refused to sleep without our aid to comfort him, some times holding him for 1min was enough, others took 45min. It was exhausting.

Solution he needed to learn to self settle, so if he woke he could calm himself. I really debated the idea of having to let him cry it out.. Well we didn’t have to. Some shhh-patting, picking up only if crying and just sitting by the cot where he could see me has worked. He now usually only wakes for a feed. How long has this taken well the self settling has progressively gotten quicker over the few weeks we’ve been doing it and less interaction from me over time, now I can sometimes just put the sleepy boy in bed and he drifts off himself without me there, others I sit the bed with shh when he grizzles, other I lie out of site till I know he’s asleep. I judge my approach by his mood and tiredness at the time. Do what feels right for you.

The other thing I think really helped with his regression ending was starting a routine. Up within the same hour every day, feed-play-sleep every 4hours and down to bed with an hour. My boy loves his routine, on day 1 of starting it he slept better than he had in a month, he had longer day naps and woke much less in the night.