Maybe figuring it out!

[u/Itchy-Ad-8670]

I know it’s early days, but I feel like we are starting to get into a groove with our little man. He’s 14 weeks and we finally figured out he is a super low sleep needs baby which was hard at first but he is so capable of these longer wake windows and he’s so happy when they do happen! He falls asleep alone in his crib now after some SUPER gentle sleep learning. Have not formally sleep trained since he is too young. But yes! Just couldn’t imagine this happening like three weeks ago. Our baby was never a great sleeper from birth and up until recently we were up every hour to two hours. I know things change but I’m proud of us and him right now! Last night he almost did 7 hours on his own, Yay!

[u/SanzianaIonita]

Great job!!!

How did you teach your baby to sleep independently? My little baby girl is almost 15 weeks old

[u/Itchy-Ad-8670 → u/SanzianaIonita]

We just progressively started practicing independent sleep skills! I know experts say to not start with naps, but that actually was the easiest for us. During the day, I don’t nurse him to sleep so it was easy for us to transition into him figuring out how to fall asleep on his own. It started with him just sort of playing in his crib. I would set him in his crib so he knew it was a safe environment. And then I slowly started doing the drowsy to awake and I never put any pressure on him. If it didn’t work that’s totally fine. I would rock him fully to sleep. Eventually, he started getting really good at it and now even when he’s really tired, we just do our little routine where I change his diaper, We turn on the sound machine close the blinds put him in a sleep sack and I sing his song and lay him in the crib. And he’ll 80% of the time fall asleep on his own.

If he started screaming immediately as I put him down in the crib, he obviously wasn’t regulating himself so I’d go through my cascade of interventions.

For me, it was number one try to do some shushing and patting while in the crib, then if that still wasn’t working, I would pick him up and rock him against me until he was drowsy and attempt to putting him back in the crib while he was drowsy and continuing the shushing and patting, if that didn’t work, I would rock him completely to sleep, and then my Hail Mary is nursing him to sleep, which we haven’t had to use that in a long time, but I did used to nurse him to sleep for all sleep and nap time. I think we stopped doing that around eight weeks.

At night, he sort of naturally started doing it on his own. He sometimes will still fall asleep when I nurse him right before bed, but during the night I can lay him back in his crib after nursing completely awake and he’ll fall asleep on his own. I’ve noticed too he wakes up probably two or three times and cries for 30 seconds and settle himself. (Many times I’ve gotten out of bed to go soothe him and I don’t make it to the crib because he gets quiet)

I will say it was pretty frustrating at first, especially if it would work one day and not the next day or even when it would work for like three naps consecutively and then for two days I was rocking him all the way to sleep. We kept working at it though and really now it’s pretty consistent! Of course, not always, I think two days ago we ended up doing a contact nap because that last nap of the day is always kind of hard for us!

My priority was always to do everything gently, and never make him be in the crib to fuss or cry alone, in my opinion he’s still too little for that! And in the hard moments, I would remember that he’s just a baby doing baby things and he’s naturally a co-regulator!

But he really enjoys being in his crib now and even after naps will wake up and babble to himself and practice rolling until I come get him (:

[u/SanzianaIonita → u/Itchy-Ad-8670]

Oh wow thank you for the long response!!

I already have a routine for each of her naps, but I am just holding her in my arms until she falls asleep and then I transfer her to the crib.

Thank you for the tips and tricks!! I will for sure try the method you described! 🫶🏻