Q&A: rocking baby to sleep

Eric writes:

"I have been pouring over various entries in your blog for a while now and decided to ask you a few questions.  Based on different books (Ferber, Weissbluth, etc.) and doctor recommendations, my wife and I tried CIO and it was miserable...for us and our son.  It didn't feel right and we were reassured when we read your thoughts on babies who increase tension by crying.

We have found some success by rocking our son to sleep though it often seems to take ages for him to fall asleep.  This might seem ridiculous, but one question is about how to get our son into the crib without waking him once he does happen to fall asleep.  On several occasions, he has fallen asleep in our arms by rocking him to sleep but awakens as soon as we set him down in his crib.  Do you know of a successful way to put him in the crib without waking him up?  Also, what is your stance on rocking him to sleep?  I know that you suggest rocking as a way of calming a baby who increases tension through crying, but should we be letting him fully fall asleep in our arms?  The problem is that if we don't let him fall asleep in our arms and we attempt to soothe him while he is lying in the crib, it takes a much longer time and he seems to be more restless. 

We are experiencing other sleeping problems (night wakenings), but would really like to try to first tackle the issue of getting him to fall asleep without the nightly battle that it always has been.  I am not sure if his age would vary your response, but he is approximately 4.5 months old right now.  He was born approximately 3 weeks early due to my wife's development of HELLP Syndrome. 

Exhausted and eagerly awaiting your response,
Eric"

Ooh. Three things I hate combined into one post:

1) HELLP Syndrome. For those of you who don't know it, it's like turbo-ultra-mega preeclampsia, and is very serious. If the baby doesn't come out, the mother can seize and then her organs shut down and she dies. I'm glad Eric's wife and the baby came out of it healthy. We should all keep a close watch on our blodd pressure and the protein in our urine while pregnant.

2) The 4-month sleep regression. It just sucks. There's no way around it. 4.5 months minus 3 weeks puts Eric's baby smack in the middle of it. It's so so hard for babies to sleep at this age.

3) The cultural expectation that a baby that young should be able to go down awake and that if the baby can't it's something the parents are doing wrong.

Yeah, there are things you could be doing to screw up your kid's sleep. Some of them are obvious, like playing loud music at 10 pm in the same room your baby's in, or snorting coke while you're breastfeeding. Some of them are not so obvious, like drinking coffee in the morning while nursing(caffeine has a half-life of 96 hours in a baby's system--go figure--but it doesn't seem to affect some babies at all) or putting a kid in pajamas that make him/her too hot and sweaty all night.

But aside from a really small group of things, there's not much you can do to change the way your baby sleeps. It's largely a function of personality and age. If Eric's baby needs to be rocked to sleep, that's the way the kid is. It doesn't mean that he'll be like that forever, or even a month from now. Just that it's what's working now. By Any Means Necessary to get everyone as much sleep as possible.

So I think rocking your kid to sleep is fine, as is putting your baby in the swing, or nursing to sleep, or using a pacifier, or having the baby go to sleep with a comfort object or white noise machine or anything else people use. (If you use a comfort object, make sure you have a spare in case something happens to the primary one, or you're screwed.) You child will not need that thing forever, and you'll probably have a good instinct about when you can switch that thing out of the routine. At the very least, you'll do better making sleep changes in your child if you have some sleep under your belt, so think of it as strategic pacing.

But. If it takes forever to rock to sleep, I'd look and see if there's something else that might work better. Eric and his wife tried CIO so they know that doesn't work for their son. (In contrast, my second son didn't want to nurse or rock down, so I tried letting him cry and he fell right to sleep after a few minutes. Stunned me, since my first son would escalate if I let him cry for more than half a minute.) Maybe swaddling would work, or something else. I wouldn't be afraid to try other things, because they just might stumble onto something that will work faster than the rocking. Or maybe not, and the rocking is as good as it gets at this stage.

It's just awful staring down the barrel of a long, long bedtime routine (those of us in the 3-year-old sleep regression can sympathize). You're finally at the end of the day, and you know you're still facing an hour of getting the kid to sleep. No way around it but through it, but it still just makes you want to cry, and ask for your money back.

How many of us have suffered through the problem of getting the kid to sleep but then not being able to put the baby down into the crib?! It's the bloody hangnail of the first year of parenting. I've head suggestions of putting a heating pad/hot water bottle in the crib to leave it warm, then moving it right before you put the baby down, but I didn't have enough hands to do that. You can let the baby sleep for 20 minutes to get deep into the sleep cycle before putting him down (and then let all the blood rush back into your arms) and that might help. I've also heard that in Australia they don't have this problem because they all put their babies down to sleep on sheepskins, and the sheepskin magically keeps them asleep. Honeslty, I can't remember if I came up with anything good at that age because I was so sleep deprived that not much stuck from that phase.

So, can anyone solve the problem of putting the baby down into the crib and keeping the baby asleep? If you can patent it, you'll make mountains of money.

And if anyone else wants to sympathize or complain, please feel free.

 

Comments

[Cara in Exile]

with our first daughter, everything woke her, and we had to do CIO just to not be in her room all the time. It was terrible, and she still, at nearly 4.5 years, is not a great sleeper. Second daughter is 4 months, still sleeping in a bassinette by the bed, but two things make getting her into the bassinette easier: I keep her on her side until she's in the bassinette, and before she falls asleep I put a folded rec'ving blanket under her head. It is folded small enough that it can't come up over her face, but not too thick. When I set her down I wait a moment before taking my arm out from under her but leaving the flannel blanket. That way her face and head are still in contact with the warm flannel, and no cold sheets. Good luck.

[cheryl]

Okay, I'm going to be a slight dissenter here - hate me now.

We started sleep training at 6 weeks. And it worked wonders. Not CIO, mind you. We did a combo of Elizabeth Pantley suggestions, Baby Whisperer suggestions, and our own gut. Basically, we watched for signs of tiredness (glassy eyes, trying to remove herself from stimulation ie. looking away, or even yawning). Once we started paying attention to this we realized that she wasn't able to be awake for much longer than an hour at a time. We had some key words and a routine - early on it was swaddling her lower body and into the Moses basket. If she cried we picked her up and repeated the swaddle and key words routine. If she just fussed we left her alone. Sometimes we had to repeat this a half dozen times before she settled. And it took a few weeks of PERSISTENCE. But by 8-9 weeks old or so we could put her down sleepy but awake for naps and bedtime and she would put herself to sleep. At almost 20 months we've not had any major sleep regressions other than cutting down the total hours of sleep at those times. As I nursed until she was 1 we also good at differentiating hungry cries versus comfort cries.

We could not co-sleep (none of us got any sleep) and our Monster is not a cuddler so rocking her to sleep wasn't much of an option from day 1 almost. Seriously, this kid hated to be held close. She is only getting a little bit cuddly now, but as my friend pointed out, her hugs are still a little stiff (compared to a cuddly kid).

I echo the comments about perspective though. I remember at 3 months a bunch of my mom's friends asked how she was sleeping. I said, "Great!" They thought she was sleeping throught the night. Nope, still getting up 2-3 times a night, but I assumed that was normal still (and still do). Even with all this sleep training we still had night nursing until she was about 9 months, when we realized she was only doing it for comfort, not food (I started paying attention to her cries again). I know, not necessarily a bad thing. But we decided to try CIO then, as we knew she knew how to self soothe already. First night was hell, second night a bit of fussing, silence the next night. And now we find that if she is upset at night, our going in to comfort her makes it worse.

Without our efforts, it seems we have a very independent child! We are in trouble when she's 13!

[catherine]

I feel like there is cry it out and then there is "letting them fuss when you know they are sleepy by patting them, putting in a pacifier, etc.--" We put our son down-- after nursing of course, half asleep-- and sometimes he goes down, and sometimes he needs to be patted and sometimes he needs a pacifier-- and sometimes he needs me to pick him up and then put him down again-- but the general idea that i've tried from the beginning is having him get used to actually falling asleep in the crib-- although he does sleep in my arms at times-- which I love but can't do every time he falls asleep..

[Aaron]

Not much to add here, we struggled at the 4 month sleep regressions as well. N was a fantastic sleeper up until then, then it was Christmas, and we've been SLOWLY getting her to sleep through the night now. She goes down around 7:00 and we dream feed her at 10:00 and she has slept until 4:30 the last couple of nights. Keeping our fingers crossed that this continues.
Anywho, putting her down sometimes is hard for us too. She normally falls asleep while eating her nighttime bottle. She sometimes wakes when I put her in the crib, but I can usually pop a soother in and she'll go back to sleep. Sounds too simple I know, but worth a try. The sucking motion soothed N enough to drift off again. When she was waking at night only an hour after eating she would sometimes go back to sleep if I got there before she got too wound up and I just put the soother in her mouth.
Good luck, this too shall pass, we are all feeling for you.

[Kellie]

Been There. My son was 4 weeks early, too, and couldn't sleep unless he was right next to me, boob in mouth. And I honestly don't give a damn if anyone out there thinks that was my fault because that was THE ONLY WAY. I tried it all. This included rocking to sleep. Which I did. For about 4.5 months three or four times a night once he stopped nursing and learned to sleep alone. That took me all the way up to 18 months.

My purpose is not to scare you. My purpose is to tell you that you are doing everything right and that this isn't your fault. Your little guy has been through a lot, as have all of you. Time will correct this sleeping thing. My son is snug in his big boy car bed right now, contentedly sleeping through the night every single peaceful night. And oh how I miss those late night cuddles.

I can tell you (advice-wise) that my son stopped noticing the crib put-down once I added a pillow and a comforter. I know that's against the rules and I didn't do it until he was 6 months old, but he slept once that happened. Also try a formula bottle if he's breastfeeding just once at bedtime. Like I said, once we switched from boob to bottle we were half-way there.

Keep your head up - it will pass and that warm, fuzzy head will be long, long gone.

[shannon]

one thing that helped the rocking to sleep go faster for us was to always sing the same song. My husband used amazing grace, me--baa baa black sheep. we figured out how many times we had to sing it to be sure he was asleep and could be put in the crib. then, we would sing while and after laying him down one more time before leaving the room.
during the night time wake up--co sleeping! we weren't in a singing and counting mood then.

[Rachel]

The amby baby hammock took our baby, who at one month wouldn't sleep anywhere other than on us (and hated being swaddled) and transformed her into a 2 month old who, back in her crib, would sleep for 9 or 10 hours at a stretch (not always, but more often than not). At three and a half months, she's still at it (we're hoping she'll get through 4 months okay). We also got better at putting her down and staying down when we discovered that if she's going to conk herself out, she does it on her side. Putting her down on her side (with one arm out as a prop) can often get her to sleep even when she's just drowsy as she goes down. She'll resettle better that way, too. And she can get herself into that position, so I feel no guilt in putting her in it. She also settles better if I put a hand on the top of her head.

[hedra]

Rachel, the hand on head thing! I think Moxie once mentioned that tendency for them to shove themselves up you when napping on you until their head is jammed up on your chin... slight pressure or warmth on the top of their heads, that 'tucked under my chin' thing... defintely helps. Funny how that stuff vanishes from the brain with time.

[Maniacal]

I have a 4.5 mo old son and I used to have issues putting him down in his crib sleeping and, although I didn't know it was an australian thing, used to put my microwaveable heating pad in the crib right where his head and shoulders would go before the rocking and then have my husband remove it right before I layed him down and he didn't even flinch! I was actually able to start laying him down partially awake using this method and slowly was able to phase it out now and lay him down without it.

I'm sure I'm just lucky and he's a good sleeper but the heating pad seemed to do the trick for us.

[Elle]

Co-sleeping, that's all we could do. My first woke as soon as she hit the crib every single time, my second is easier in that I can put her in there (after being rocked) and she will nap, but it's a no-go at bedtime. For the napping I just lay her in there and pat her back and she settles in.

I also wanted to add my dislike and skepticism over the idea that the majority of 4 month olds can be placed in their crib awake and will drift off to sleep. Most everybody I've known has had to take extraordinary measures and lengthy efforts to get the baby to sleep at this age. It's not like on TV at all! You just have to adjust your expectations, it'll seem less frustrating that way.

[Heather]

We had (and sometimes still have) a similar issue. Our fulla would wake up immediately when placed in his bed unless he was put down on his stomach and then he would sleep happily for hours. Luckily this was only an issue during the day so I could hover over him and check him frequently. This lasted for about 6 weeks. At this age however he would usually go to sleep without being held. When he started crawling however, we had to physically restrain his legs to get him to sleep, and now we nearly always have to hold him to sleep and have the moving to crib issue. To get around this he often sleeps on a big bed during the day so that I can hold him to sleep then ease away, surrounded him with pillows as a buffer from the floor. Sometimes for your sanity you just have to do what works rather than what is accepted practice.

[Nike Vandal]

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