Why does rocking put babies to sleep

It's crazy how something so complex can feel so simple and good. Rocking a baby, and avoiding tree tops, can help calm down your baby, cradle and all. November See All Trying Birth After. Raising Kids. Simulate the feeling of the womb, and the best way to do that is by rocking a baby to sleep.

Rocking is a natural way to soothe, comfort, and help a child fall asleep and a reason they calm down so quickly in baby bouncers and baby swings. It can be discouraging if you struggle to rock your baby to sleep, especially considering all the benefits.

Some kids prefer to be upright, which could be because they have reflux. Another key is to keep the child connected to the body when rocking, Narvaez says. That goes for rocking, too. At the park. At that work meeting.

At that party. Sign up for the Fatherly newsletter to get original articles and expert advice about parenting, fitness, gear, and more in your inbox every day. Please try again. My knees were ready to bust, and most important, even the rocking eventually stopped working. Start by giving your baby a chance to fall asleep on his own, putting him down drowsy but awake. Let him lie awake on his back, and feed him after waking up, not to sleep.

Still struggling with putting your baby to sleep or wish he could learn to self soothe and sleep on his own? Download your PDF below—at no cost to you:. Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. We set up a sleep routine the day we transferred her to her crib. I think that was 3 months.

She usually fell asleep to nursing, which I was extremely worried about! At that time, I also would wake her if she fell asleep nursing before bed because I wanted her to fall asleep on her own. I knew she was drowsy. I tried rocking her to sleep when she was little and she could care less.

She was colicky for a couple months as a newborn…nothing could soothe her! I used a dummy a lot. I also put them both down drowsy after having their feed, and then other than feeding them during the night when they were little, I tried really hard not to pick them up again out of their cot. So I would go in and talk to them, sing, coo etc, stroke their hands when they were little they slept in a cot in our bedroom where I could reach them , stroked tummies, foreheads etc and passed them dummies when they dropped them.

I love this post. I have the same regret, although our story is a bit different. I made the mistake of holding Eli for all of his naps not at night, just during the day. Same regret! Baby had a hard go of it with reflux and colic at first so I was ready to do anything to make it easier for him.

Then, he went through this phase where he would hit himself in the face while sleep twitching and wake himself up so we figured only swaddling would help for the record, before I got to the desperation point of using those swaddle straight-jackets, I made fun of them as horrible contraptions. So tiring! I was worried that I would be buying an adult-sized swaddle to send her in college with. Ultimately, though, I never felt like I was taking it away from her because she eventually though kind of late in her first year she gave it up herself in favor of sucking her fingers.

We have struggled with sleep with her for other reasons, ongoing, and while we never did an all-out sleep training we always went in if her crying hit a certain point because without a doubt, if she reached a certain level she would throw up we drew the line early and feel that she has been more self-sufficient as a result.

I think I would transfer our second kid to a crib around the same time 2 months but perhaps not use a swaddle unless we really, really needed it. I hated rocking my baby until she was sleep trained, and now I miss it. We would spend like 2 hours trying to get her to sleep at night, rocking her and trading off when one of us got tired. It was so frustrating. Now we rock her for about 5 minutes and then put her in the crib and she falls asleep on her own.

Sometimes I am tempted to stay and snuggle her longer. Parenting is all about personal choices and one of my attitudes is about sacrifice. My choice was to rock and hold my baby until she fell asleep.

I also knew that it would be the only time in her life and my life that I would be able to do that. At four, she still wants me to be next to her while she falls asleep and at times I still rock her to sleep. I gave up a lot of sleep in the process but I feel it was worth it.

We would occasionally rock our daughter to sleep but we usually put her to sleep drowsy but awake. We did do a little bit of sleep training it took all of one night after I weaned her around 13 months because she wanted to wake up super early.

We were so desperate for ANY sleep when Monkey was a baby, I have no regrets for anything we did to get that sleep we needed. He was a naturally terrible sleeper. In our case, nursing all the way to sleep and nursing him back to sleep right away was the only thing that worked to let me get longer than minute chunks of sleep. So we co-slept and when he woke I put a breast in his mouth without necessarily waking up all the way myself.

Within a few days of giving up, we felt halfway human again. Falls asleep easily and quickly, generally sleeps about 11 hours. We have a water bottle for him within his reach because most nights he wakes up at some point wanting a drink of water. Great post and discussion. Our first, Mbot, was a terrible sleeper; his little bro, Gbot, was a great sleeper. Into their toddler years, Mbot was still a terrible sleeper but slept when restrained in his car seat; Gbot hated the car seat restraints.

I guess the moral here is that two children treated virtually the same from birth still have such different sleep habits. What we do for our children. We are all trying so hard! A part of me feels like we did what we did based on what we thought he needed. Sigh… We indeed are all trying so hard! She cried it out for 2 nights then slept for 10 hours straight. In 2 nights!!! So, when we had 2, we thought we had it all worked out.

And he is the easy baby. But, we did sleep train at 5 months when I stopped breast feeding and he sleeps through 10 hours. So, one battle won, a war to go…. My second pregnancy was triplets and from the moment they come home they were taught to self settle and schedule feed.

Best thing I ever did. My first baby was brilliant! A little co-sleeping for mama to nurse without getting out of bed, and she began sleeping through the night at 3 months, moving to a crib was no problem then. My second was a little demon in a cute body. There was nothing we could do. I feel the same way about the pacifier. At first, that thing worked so good at putting my daughter to sleep, I totally ran with it.

But then her sleep got worse and worse cause it would always fall out until we were at a point that she was waking up every 60 to 90 minutes all night long. I was going to crazy.

So we had to sleep train too. It was hard at first, but man, did it work wonders. Last night we got our longest stretch ever at Roarke had the strongest sucking reflex the baby yoga techer had ever seen… At five months he drank a full 8oz might have been ten, not sure feed in under 4 minutes, and she was gobsmacked!

Yes, I used a dummy from a young age 3 days but that was also due to him being in hospital and waking every hour or two for something to suck on, mainly for the comfort he rarely actually drunk anything.

He stopped using it himself at about 18 months.