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View Full Version : getting my 4 month old to sleep without rocking.



becky29
08-09-2005, 10:03 PM
maybe its my fault but whenever he goes to sleep he will only fall asleep by me rocking him in my arms or sad to say in his swing. i have put him down when he was almost asleep and he will start crying not even 5 minutes later. i do let him cry before breaking down and going to get him. when should i start the ferber method? help because this can't go on.

ltcooks
08-15-2005, 05:40 PM
hi becky,

as the mother of 4 month old, i feel your pain! just today i bought the Ferber book and the Weissbluth book, so i'm still green when it comes to this stuff. having read about both methods, i decided to try out ferber's technique this past weekend. i think it is appropriate for babies as young as 4 months, depending on the child. my son would only sleep after taking a bottle, even if he really wasn't hungry. i tried letting him cry for a few minutes and i just couldn't handle it! finally i decided to really try out the ferber method (thanks largely to the nice description of it in the baby-411 book) and so far it seems to be working! keep in mind it has been exactly 3 days...

the first night my poor little fella cried for exactly 30 minutes before going to sleep (after having a bottle, then a book, and then mommy-kisses - our bed-time ritual). i think i checked on him more frequently than Ferber suggests, but in the end he finally went to sleep and slept all night! the next day at nap time we did the same bed-time ritual and he cried for less than 5 minutes. that night he had a bath and went to sleep pretty easily, only a few minutes of whimpering (no book this night since baby was so tired after his bath). last night we again did his bed-time ritual and he fussed for about 15 minutes. it is so hard to listen to him screaming bloody murder,or worse when he does his "mumumum" thing that i swear is him calling out to mommy. still, i can see how he is working at self-regulating and it seems like he's getting the hang of it! i've even stopped feeling like a rotten person because my baby is crying.

i think the key is to really focus on your baby's bed-time ritual and sticking to this plan. book, prayers, singing, whatever it is that signals bedtime. rocking him in your arms can be part of the ritual, since this will relax him and make him feel cozy. then he'll learn that sleeping in the crib is the next step. even though my boy is still trying to learn how to go to sleep on his own (and his momma is learning how to NOT cry while he's crying), i think ferber method makes a lot of sense. i know some folks don't like it, but so far it seems to be working for me. best of luck to you - let us know how it goes...

lt

AnaC.
07-27-2007, 07:11 PM
your baby is asociating going to bed with rocking, everytime you rock him he knows is time to go to bed, when he wakes up at night and you are not rocking him he cannot go to sleep by himself since he doesn't have what he is used to have to go to sleep.

this is what doctor ferber explains in his book, so I tried his method and gave my baby a teddy bear, and he learned that when teddy is there is time to go to sleep, now he can take a nap anywhere as soon as his teddy is there, and when he wakes up at night if teddy is there he goes to sleep again without problem.

it is really an asociation problem, you just have to apply the method and make him asociate going to sleep with his crib, a blanky or just a teddy, things that are there even if you are not.

Fairy
07-29-2007, 02:07 AM
This is an old thread. Locking.