How to get babies to self soothe?

My twins are now 3 months old. My daughter is a pretty decent self soother naturally, thank God! My son, however, cannot self soothe and I'm lost as to how get him to do that. Right now I have to go in maybe 10-20 times to pop the passy back in and sometimes end up giving up and just end up holding him. Any ideas??

 

They really dont learn how to self soothe that early. For mine, it was closer to 7 months actual that they could really put themselves to sleep. We did lots of rocking, shush patting, and walking around. They also fell asleep on the bottle too.

 

I think they pretty much self soothe when they are ready. There's not much you can do to speed up the process. Sorry, I know you wanted some concrete advice but that's kind of how it is.

 

I don't think there is really any way to get them to do it, unless you do something like CIO, which 3 monthers are IMO too young for. I just think some babies are content for the most part and some are not. I had one of each with the twins!

 

I'd love to know too. Mine are almost 5 months old, and Rebecca has always been excellent at self soothing, and Maya will have none of it. I am biding my time for now and planning on sleep training using the Ferber method when they are closer to 7-8 months old (I used to say 6 months, but they might now be ready by then, or at least Maya won't be). They are not BAD at sleeping, they'll do 12 hours at night with only one middle of the night feeding, but it's the actual falling asleep that Maya has trouble with.

 

Well that makes me feel better. I've been getting so worried, thinking that I'm not doing something right here, but it sounds normal for this age. Like mommy2bmr said, he does fine once he is asleep and will go to sleep pretty much right away after a night feeding, but it's getting him down to sleep initially that is so hard. Mine have actually just started doing about 10-11 hours straight at night with only one feeding in between, usually around 3 am. I'm pretty happy about it too.

 

One of my twins did that too. Actually she still does and we're trying to wean her off her binky right now (she's almost 10 months). There was one thing that helped me though. My memory isn't that great, but I think it was in the Happiest Baby On The Block video where the guy gently tugs and pulls on the binky when it is in their mouth to teach them to hold onto it better with their mouth. I did this with my DD and it really helped reduce the number of times per night I had to go in.

HTH

 

One of mine started learning at about 4 months. From about 2 months I noticed that he liked to hold things, fabric things. I would give him a cloth diaper to hold and it calmed him right down. We went everywehre with that cloth diaper, and his brother got one, too, in all fairness and he liked it but not as much as the other. Anyway, at 4 months I bought them these little lovey toys at Ikea. They are the ones with the animal heads with little mini blankies on them - Ikea has a frog and a bunny. The one that liked holding the cloth diaper fell immediately in LOVE with the bunny. He rubs it on his face to go to sleep. We're still working on the other one.

 

we didn't feel our guys were ready until they were in the 6-month-actual 5-month-adjusted range.

 

That pacifier thing from Happiest Baby on the Block sounds interesting. I will definitely try that! I also need to get them a lovey or something to hold on to. They are just starting to grab onto things, especially my son. He likes to hold onto blankets, so I will have to get him something.