About 8 to 9 months of age, the baby can start sleeping in the crib without having to stay on his or her lap to fall asleep. However, to achieve this goal, it is necessary for the baby to get used to sleeping in this way, arriving step by step, because it is not suddenly that the child will learn to sleep alone, without surprising or crying.
These steps can be followed one a week, but there are babies who need more time to get used to them, so parents should ideally see when they feel safe to take the next step. You don’t need to reach every step in a month, but it’s important to be consistent and not return to the starting point.
Here are 6 steps you can take to teach your baby to sleep alone
The first step is to respect the sleep routine, creating habits that should be maintained at the same time, daily, for at least 10 days. For example: the baby can bathe at 7:30 p.m., Dine at 8:00 p.m., Breastfeed or bottle feed at 10 p.m., so that the father or mother can already enter the room with him, maintaining a dim light, presence, in a quiet and peaceful environment that favors sleep and the change of diapers and s diapers.
You should be very calm and focused and always talk to your baby gently so that you don’t get too stimulated and more sleepy. If your baby is used to your knees, you can first follow this routine and put the baby to sleep on your lap.
After the sleep routine, instead of keeping the baby in your lap to sleep, you should put the baby in the crib and stand next to you, watch him, sing, and cradle the baby to be calm and at peace. You can even put a small pillow or stuffed animal to sleep with your baby.
It’s important to resist and not hug your baby if you start grunting and crying, but if you cry too much for more than a minute, you can reconsider whether it’s time for him or her to sleep alone or try later. If this is your choice, keep the sleep routine so that you always get used to it, as this will make you feel safer in the room and fall asleep faster.
If the baby is muttering and crying for more than a minute, he may try not to take it, but he must be very close, stroking his back or his head, saying “xiiiiii”, for example. This allows the child to calm down, feel safe and stop crying. However, it is not yet time to leave the room and should reach this stage in about 2 weeks.
If you no longer need to take the baby and if he calms down in the crib, only with your presence nearby, you can now move on to the 4th step of slowly moving away. Every day you have to stay away from the crib, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to sleep the baby in this fourth step, but you’ll follow steps 1 to 4 every day.
You can sit in the lactating chair, in the bed next door or even sit on the floor. The important thing is that the baby notices your presence in the room and if he lifts his head, he will find you looking at him and willing to help you, if necessary. Thus, the child learns to have more confidence and feels safer sleeping without his or her knees.
In the 4th stage, the baby realizes that you are close, but away from your touch and in the 5th stage, it is important that you realize that you are there ready to comfort it, but that it will not pick you up every time you touch it. growls or threatens to cry. So, if you start mumbling in his crib, even far away, you can do very quietly ‘xiiiiiii’ and go talk to him in a very quiet and quiet voice to make him feel safe.
You should first stay in the room until the baby sleeps, so it’s a routine to follow for a few weeks. Gradually, you should walk away and one day you should be at 3 steps, the next 6 steps until you can lean on the baby’s bedroom door. Once you have fallen asleep, you can leave the room silently so that you do not wake up.
You should not suddenly leave the room, put the baby in the crib and turn your back on or try not to comfort the baby when she cries and shows that she needs attention. Babies can’t talk and their biggest form of communication is crying, and so when the child cries and no one responds, it tends to become safer and scarier, making him cry even more.
So, if it is not possible to follow these steps every week, you do not need to feel defeated or angry with the baby. Each child develops in a different way, and sometimes what works for one doesn’t work for the other. There are babies who love their knees and if their parents don’t see any trouble holding the child in their lap, there’s no reason to try this separation if everyone is happy.
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