Overstimulation and Self Settling – 4 months

I could write sooooo much about our sleep journey so I will keep this post to what was happening in the girls’ life at 4 months old when we asked a “baby whisperer” to help us.  The girls had the following symptoms.

• A lot of crying (3-4 hours a day)
• Difficult to feed (bottle refusal and crying)
• Hard to settle to sleep (not even mummy rocking, patting, shushing, car, pram, music, etc.etc. would work!!!  They would just scream for hours and then pass out from exhaustion)

Here was the baby whisperer’s diagnosis:

• Overstimulated.
• Overtired.

Recommended routine for when they are awake:

• Baby wakes and then nappy change. 
• Put baby in bouncer and leave them alone.  Don’t be stimulating.
• Wait for baby to tell you they’re hungry.  It’s important to learn your baby’s hunger signs....most babies grizzle and try to eat their fists.
• Offer food.  Don’t beat yourself up if they don’t take much.  You can’t make a baby drink!
•  Burp lots
• Put them back in the bouncer and leave them alone.  Don’t be stimulating.
• Wait for them to tell you they are tired.   Tired signs are very important and shouldn’t be ignored.  Tired signs may include grizzling, jerky limb movements and yawning. 
• Offer food again.  This was to make sure they were full before putting them back to bed.  This was important with my girls who would often refuse to feed at all during an awake period.
• Put baby to bed.  

Controlled comforting:

• Put baby to bed and give them a sleep cue such as “sleep time”, “shhh” or a song – whatever you are willing to do over and over (you’ll see why soon...!).  Put your hand on their back (mine were tummy sleepers) and give them a reassuring soft pat/jiggle to calm them down a bit while giving the sleep cue.  At this point they may be protesting but hopefully not screaming.
• Leave the room and listen.

-          Now you want to listen and let the baby protest but not let them get hysterical.  This is a hard judgement to make, especially by mums who are particularly sensitive to their baby’s cries!  This is where having a baby whisperer there to hold you back from running in is helpful!  The idea is not to help them to sleep by going in as soon as they start crying....the idea is to let them cry but intervene before they get so upset it is really hard to calm them down.

• Give the sleep cue and calm baby down without picking them up.  You want to hang around long enough to calm them down but not aid them to sleep. 
•  Leave the room and listen.
• Repeat until baby is asleep.

We had a rule that we would let baby have their dummy the third time we went in.  Often they would settle at that point.  It was strange that they wouldn’t settle if we put them in the cot with the dummy straight away but letting them cry a bit before the dummy worked well.