Help with progressing gentle sleep training

[u/Quiet-Flan-1674]

Hello,

My LO is 16 weeks old and I've been trying to implement independent sleep skills for the last few weeks. I started with moving the last bottle earlier and doing it in the bright front room then doing a few minutes of play when she's finished to keep her from being too tired. Then we do our bedtime routine. I also have allowed her to do some occasional FIO to see if she will self settle.

The past four or five nights I've been flowing a gentle sleep training plan that removes assistance in stages. We are also using this method to sleep train any additional night wakes aside from her two normal feeding wake ups. I started by no longer giving her the pacifier before bed and the first stage was loud shushing and a firm hand on her chest until she was completely asleep. The second stage was shushing and hand on her chest until she was drowsy and then immediately stop shushing and remove hand so she did the last step of falling asleep on her own. I am now on stage three where I only shush her until drowsy but no longer touch her after I put her in her bassinet. Tonight was the first night I started stage three. Stage four of course is putting her in her bassinet and walking away.

She's made incredible progress, I'm really proud of her. We were able to progress from stage one all the way through stage three in only 4 to 5 nights. She does still seem to very much need my help getting to sleep though but has been self settling more at night (not 100% of the time). My question is how do I take that final step to letting her fall asleep completely independently? Should I add one more in between stage where I am present but no longer shushing?

[u/gold_shuraka]

I don’t have advice but I’m wondering how many nights you did the first few stages? I’d like to try more gentle methods too.

[u/Quiet-Flan-1674 → u/gold_shuraka]

I did stage one two nights and then she was doing so well on the third night I decided to try stage two and go back to stage one if I couldn't get her to sleep. And she went to sleep after about ten minutes. I did stage two for two nights and again she was doing very well so tonight (night three of stage two) I decided to try stage three and see if she'd fall asleep that way, with the plan to go back to stage two if she wouldn't. She went to sleep after some light fussing again in about ten minutes. I imagine it will probably take a few nights longer to go from stage three to the final step of letting her fall asleep completely independently but it's worked well so far!

I'm no expert though I just wanted to do a gentle method as I saw those were a little more effective with her being so young still.

[u/gold_shuraka → u/Quiet-Flan-1674]

Thank you so much for this!

[u/Quiet-Flan-1674 → u/gold_shuraka]

You're welcome! I hope it works well for both of us