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Advice on getting baby to sleep

My DS is 4 1/2months. I have to feed him to sleep at night and he usually goes down at about 8pm for a good few hours.
However during the day he really fights his sleeps. He will only sleep if we go out in the car or if i feed him to sleep - he would happily sleep on me for a good hour but the minute i try to stand up (to put him in his cot he wakes up!!!)

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  • hello there

    it took us a while to get daytime naps right, we found catching him as he was getting tired and laying him in his cot awake worked better than waiting until he was exhausted as he would then fight it, it does take a while for them to learn and it takes a lot of pereverance. we started self settling at night before daytime and it took us about 3 weeks for him to self settle to sleep at night, after a story i would put him down say night, give him a kiss then walk out of the room, the first few days i was back within seconds as he would start to cry but it did get gradually longer before he cried out and eventually he self settled to sleep with out crying, i never left him to cry i would go straight back to him and either give him a cuddle or pop his dummy in,

    once he was settled at night we started in the day with naps in the cot which took about the same amount of time,
  • I did similar to piggypops when my son was 16wks, except I worked on the day naps first and then the nights fell into place. It took about a week or so doing pupd and I would leave the room and return when he cried, pick up for cuddle and straight back down then leave the room. It was a REALLY tough week to break him in but it got easier each day and the result was worth it as he went from 30min naps to an hour or 1.5hrs.
    With any sleep training method you need to allow time for it to work, and not cave in! They need you to teach them how to self settle and 4 months is an ideal age to do it. It can be really hard as they dont like change to begin with because it's unfamiliar so make sure you have some support around you.
    I agree with piggypops 100%, you need to put him down when it's nap time but when he is still awake.
    Good luck! x
  • Ok thanks will give it a go x
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