gettting my baby to fall asleep in his crib

Christie - posted on 10/22/2009

In all honesty, I would tackle one issue at a time. Especially as Mr 16months is going to have his whole routine shaken up very soon with the arrival of a sibling. The dummy (as we call a binkie in Australia), is something that can be removed at a later date once you have everything settled in the household. And unless the sippy cup is a major issue at the moment i.e. he is throwing it out of bed several times a night and you have to go in and get it. I'd tackle the settling first.

My suggestion is changing his sleep cues, which may take up to a week to really begin to show improvement. I'll outline my Miss 15months' routine for nap/sleep and then talk about how I got it working for us.

Nap Routine:
*Fresh nappy
*Into Gro-bag
*2 short books (usually one with items to point at, and one with a short story)
I give my daughter her sippy cup with water in it at this point just so she has a last chance to have a drink before it is sleep time.
*Carry her into her room where I hold her either up over my shoulder, or in the cradle position (whatever she prefers), and sing rock a bye baby, then twinkle twinkle, then rock a bye baby again. When I get to the words "down will come baby cradle and all" I lay DD in her cot (which is empty except for her blanket-bear) and pull up the cot side.
* I say sleep tight, love you and walk out of the room.
*Often this is when she'll kick off and start to cry, it's not a distressed cry, it's usually a combination of tiredness and frustration that I am leaving the room.
*The longest it EVER takes her to settle is 10mins and that is when she is hideously overtired. Many times she goes to sleep without much or any fuss at all.

Nightime sleep routine-
*Tea @ 5:30pm
*Bath @ 6:00pm
*Short massage with lotion or body powder (this has become a lot quicker now she is a toddler and isn't keen on laying still *lol*)
*Fresh nappy
*Dressed into pjs
*Grobag
(By now it is usually almost 7pm)
* 5 or 6 stories a mixture of pointing books and actual stories, always finishing on an actual story to calm her down.
*Carried into her room where I use the same settling cues
*"Good night princess, sleep tight, I love you, see you in the morning"- all as I am walking towards the door.

Now, in your son's case what I would recommend is the pick up/put down method which is what I used with my daughter once she was about 8months old and got into the separation anxiety phase. It is basically an extremely gentle method of controlled crying/controlled comforting and it worked wonders for us.

The basic premise is you go through the nap/sleep routine and lay bub down. Walk to the door and wait 1-2mins and listen to the type of cry he is giving. If the cry gets worse than a 6/10 (10 being the most distressed imaginable) walk back into the room, pick him up, and repeat the singing (or whatever you choose to use) and lay him back down.

The main difference between this and controlled crying is you are only really watching the clock for 2 or so mins just to give him a chance to calm down and start to settle, then you are listening for the cues that he is either beginning to get ready to sleep, or he is getting distressed and looking for reassurance that Mum hasn't abandoned him.

The main thing to listen for is the cries getting further spaced apart and lessening in intencity. I had to keep reminding myself that if I kept going back into the room I was likely to STOP DD from going to sleep, rather than help her.

The other thing that I found really helpful was if DD got really beside herself I would stop the sleep settling and just give her a cuddle. But the kicker was, it had to be in her room. I was aiming not to reward her by coming back into the loungeroom to hang out with us and it worked, really fast!

I really think if you could try this consistently for a week it'd change both your lives. All the best of luck with it!

Christina - posted on 10/21/2009

Eek... that is tough. Perhaps the Ferber method of letting him scream for 5 min., check on him, then lengthen to 10 (or in my husband's case, increase one min. at a time) and keep trying until you get him asleep. It may take a few days to weeks to acclimate but when he comes around, it is really a beautiful thing to get him to sleep on his own.



As for the binkie, that's a tough one. We just told my older daughter we had to take it away because it was leaving a rash in the winter time and giving her boo boos. She balked the first night and then was okay. That was at 2 1/2 years. Not sure when you want to start the process but you can trying "mailing" to another kid who needs it, making it spicey (my nephew didn't like cinnamon and his parents said it became spicey when he turned 3), cut the end off so they can't get it to work or have them "donate" it to the new baby when he/she comes. Hope that helps. Good luck!