The One-Week Baby Sleep Solution by Gina Ford

Author:Gina Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Once you are confident that your baby is having the correct amount of sleep for his age and is settling to sleep with only being held and not rocked, you can then move on to stage two of the plan.

Stage two: one week to fully eliminate rocking

DAYS ONE TO THREE

• Always start the second stage of the plan in the evening when your baby is at his most tired.

• Use the method above, using patting and shushing to get your baby to a sleepy stage, but do not get him quite as sleepy as he was during the preparation stage.

• Each night reduce the time he is on your shoulder or across your chest, and increase the time he is in the crook of your arm with your hand on his chest.

• Start to put him in the cot sleepy but awake and remain by the side of the cot with either your hand on his chest or holding his hands across his chest.

• If you sense that he is about to become unsettled and more awake, you can gently roll him onto his side and shush and pat him until he falls asleep. If he is under six months it is important that once he is asleep that you make sure that he is lying on his back. Putting him on his side should only be done during the shushing and patting stage of getting him to sleep. With an older baby of six months or more, I find it better to move him onto his tummy and hold down with one hand and shush and pat with the other. (See here for more on the shush and pat technique.)

• The aim during the first three nights is to get your baby used to falling asleep in his cot, not to totally self-settle at this stage.

• During the day the same method should be used to settle your baby for naps.

DAY FOUR

• On the fourth day you can still use the above method to settle your baby for his naps, but in the evening you should allow him to self-settle using the crying-down method as described here.

• If you find that after ten minutes your baby is crying up instead of crying down (see here), you can help calm him down by shushing and patting him, but this should only be done until he calms down; he should not be shush-patted into a deep sleep.

• You can return to the room every ten minutes and shush-pat him to calm him down, but it is important that you do not shush-pat him to sleep.

DAY FIVE

• On the fifth day you should start to settle your baby in his cot and use the crying-down method, checking him after ten minutes if he is crying up and, if needs be, shush-patting him to calm him down.

• It is really important that if you have to shush and pat him that you do not shush-pat him into a deep sleep.

• During the days of self-settling, it may take him longer to get to sleep and he will, in effect, lose some sleep.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.