Try lots of reassurance : 1) Talk quietly and cuddle your baby until calm 2) Put your baby on their back in the cot awake (drowsy) 3) Comfort your baby with gentle 'ssshh' sounds, gentle rhythmic patting, rocking or stroking until baby is calm or asleep.
Be sure to give your baby any extra cuddling or soothing techniques such as patting and shushing to help your baby settle. Also try to place baby in the cot drowsy but not asleep. Settling may take longer during the dummy removal phase but stick with it and stay calm. It is a only a phase and you can get through it.
Hold your baby in your arms until they fall asleep. Use gentle rhythmic patting, rocking, stroking, talking, or softly singing before putting your baby into the cot asleep. These repetitions signal relaxation and sleep. If your baby wakes after a baby sleep cycle you may need to re-settle.
Comfort settling
The idea is for your baby to learn how to fall asleep on their own. Start with your usual sleep routine, such as nappy change, story, a cuddle. Gently place your baby in their cot, on their back and tell them it's sleep time. Pat or shh for a few minutes if needed to calm them, then leave the room.
A little grizzle or moan is quite common when a baby stirs, it's just what they do in between sleep cycles. How long you give your baby to resettle is completely up to you. However, if they are crying and you instinctively feel they are asking for your support, I recommend resettling them for 5-10 minutes.
Some babies learn to self-soothe naturally as they get older. However, in other cases, parents or caregivers try to encourage the behavior through various techniques. Many approaches exist for encouraging babies to self-soothe, ranging from the extinction method, or “cry it out” (CIO), to more gradual approaches.
Second Night Syndrome
Generally occurs about 24 hours after birth for almost every baby. Your baby will want to be on the breast constantly but quickly fall asleep. If you put him down, he will probably wake up. If you put him back to breast, he will feed for a short time and fall asleep.
She's Tired.
Most babies up to 3 months can stay awake no more than ~1.5 hours before it becomes harder to get them to fall asleep and then stay asleep. So your baby wants to eat and sleep - competing needs this time of day. She may be staying up longer than the 1.5 hours to eat and now she's tired, which means fussy.
Newborns and babies aged 0 to 6 months have not yet learned to settle by themselves so it's common for them to be unsettled. They usually need your help to settle and go back to sleep. Babies usually need a cue to tell them it is time to go to sleep.
Most babies are able to sleep through the night – or sleep for at least six hours without waking up to eat – sometime between 3 to 6 months of age. Healthy babies who are born full-term are generally able to sleep through the night without a feeding starting at 3 months of age or when they weigh 12 to 13 pounds.
Don't worry if your baby won't settle
There is really one thing that is most important and that is to make sure your baby is fed well at every feed. A hungry or slightly hungry baby will usually not settle to sleep easily and if he does drop off to sleep will wake soon after his feed and be unsettled.
Some babies cluster feed at night not because they're hungry, but because it's comforting. Since feeding is also frequently a part of the nighttime routine, the combination of skin-on-skin contact, eating, and snuggling can be soothing to them which can help them fall asleep for a longer period of time.
Here's how: Reduce the time your child feeds by 2-5 minutes every second night. For example, if your child usually feeds for 10 minutes, feed for 8 minutes for 2 nights, then 6 minutes for the next 2 nights, and so on. Re-settle your child after each shortened feed with the settling techniques of your choice.
Even a small catnap to reset can help – the amount of time doesn't really matter. Don't put them in their bassinet or crib for this catnap. Instead, try a contact nap. Overtired babies are usually clingy, so letting your little one sleep in your arms or putting them in a baby wrap carrier can help soothe them.
Lying still at night: When we sleep, typically, there's minimal movement of our bodies. Therefore it's harder for air to move around and work its way through our system. Immature digestive systems: Babies have immature digestive systems and their little bodies are learning too!
Night two can bring way more crying that the first 24 hours. The theory is that during the second to third day postpartum, your newborn is discovering they are no longer in the comforts of your womb. They are experiencing many new firsts – the feeling of hunger, cold air across their skin, lights and stimulation etc…
Second-night dramas. Referred to colloquially as the 'second-night syndrome,' this is the time your baby is thought to recognise how much his life has changed. Their idyllic life in utero has been replaced with one that is bright, noisy and feels altogether different.
The pick up put down method
Place your baby in their crib, drowsy but awake, at a set bedtime. If your baby is calm, you can leave the room. If your baby begins to cry, pick them up and cuddle or rock them until they stop crying. Once your baby is calm, put them back down in their crib.
On a similar note, I want to reassure you that you are not going to ruin your baby's life if you don't teach them to self-settle until they're a bit older or until they naturally do it themselves. I can assure you that no 5-year-olds need to be rocked to sleep all through the night!
Sleep Training Must: 15-Minute Rule
It's based on the idea that even the healthiest of babies will predictably cry, whimper, or whine during the 5-20 minutes while they're transitioning between sleep cycles. If you rush in, you don't allow your baby the opportunity to fall back to sleep on his own.