Baby Whisperer fans...need advice..or Any Ole "Routine"

My youngest began sleeping through the night at 3 months, it is actually not the age that determines this, but the babies weight. From a metabolic standpoint the infant needs to be at least 10lbs (typically a doc will recommend that the infant "double" it's birthweight). Anyway, I found success with the following:

1. Swaddle

2. White Noise (ocean sound)

3. Chicco Goodnight Stars (before EVERY nap/bedtime I play this so my son has the same routine and knows its time for sleep)
http://www.chiccousa.com/toys/newborn-2/goodnight-stars.aspx

4. Security stuffed animal (or blanket) I actually slept with it for a few days to get my smell and he thought I was next to him.

5. Pacifier. I would not let him "cry it out", not a fan, but I wouldn't go in there for every whimper. If it led to crying, I would give him a pacifier to eliminate a feeding. I also use all rubber pacifiers, they are really soft.

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Well I know you said you don't need comments like "she is too young" so I won't say that :) but what I will say is all babies are different so yes some people have babies that sleep great at a very young age but others don't. So you can only do what will work for YOUR baby. My first daughter at 8 weeks was sleeping 7 hour stretches. I didn't train her to do this cause I believed that at that age she needs to eat at night and I can't deprive her of that. But yes on her own she just started sleeping that long. She would go to bed around 11 wake around 6 to eat and then back to bed until around 10. Like you I wanted her to start going to bed earlier so I started waking her up earlier in the morning so she would be ready for bed around 8. It took a couple weeks but she started going down at 8. With that happening she woke more at night. Because she was still hungry at 11. So she was down at 8 ate at 11 then again at 6 then up for the day at 8. So yes it is totally ok to mover your babies sleep schedule up but that doesn't mean she will not still need to eat those 2 times during the night. But my second daughter got up to eat every 2 to 3 hours the first whole year of her life! Yes for 13 months I got up and nursed her every 2 to 3 hours so I have had 2 babies with completely different sleeping habits. The other hard thing with trying to train a baby at such a young age to not eat at all during the night is that when they go through at growth spurt (which happens a lot in the first year) they will wake to eat and you do have to feed them and then your back to getting up twice a night for a while. So yes wake her up earlier and she will be ready for bed earlier but as for waking at night if she wakes and will eat then she is hungry and you need to feed her. If she wakes but doesn't want to eat and just wants you then it's ok to let her cry for while to see if she will go back to sleep on her own.

Not sure if your baby is breast or formula fed? But I will tell you what I did with my kids (who were formula fed) and it may work for you. After they had been fed in the early evening (around 7pm) I would put them to "bed" in the bedroom in the crib , so they got into that "bedtime" routine early. Yes I knew they were going to be waking again for another feed but I just wanted to establish "bedtime" from an early age. The next feed which was around 10/11pm I would try and get to them before they woke and gave a dream feed instead , so I was able to put them back down without any fussing and being awake for a period of time , this didn't always work but i'd say 80% of the time it did.

When you are back to work if you have to take her to wherever she is going asleep then I wouldn't worry about that , that is one of the advantages of a small baby , you can just transfer them to the car seat and off you go , she will be coming up to 3 months old at that point and they usually have a shift in routine/sleep patterns at that age , so you may find that she starts to wake earlier by herself anyway.

Hope this helps

We did the baby whisperer. I cant remember our exact routine now (my dd is 4) but we started her on it early, maybe 2-3 weeks. I was formula feeding, so I'm not sure what the difference is for breastfeeding. Spend a few days writing down when she eats and when she sleeps, and see what her general pattern is, and try to adjust accordingly, making it more consistent during the day. Our daughter had specific times we'd feed her and put her down for her nap (obviously we'd feed her more if she was hungry at different times, like during growth spurts, but generally she ate at about the same time every day).

The "dream feed" also helped us keep her sleeping longer, and we swaddled her until she was about 9 months old, because she slept longer and better that way.

I also made sure that we both got up at the time that I knew she was going to have to get up in the mornings for me to go to work, and we would start our daily routine that way, which helped ALOT when I went back to work. Maybe you could try getting her up a little earlier every day until her schedule is working on the schedule you'll need her on.

My daughter is still pretty routine oriented, which isnt surprising since her father and I both are also.

I used the Baby Whisper book with my oldest child and am using it now for our newborn. I love her EASY routine (eat, activity, sleep, you). It made perfect sense to me that I should teach my child to fall asleep when tired from activity rather than with a bottle or breast in her mouth. I started EASY as soon as we brought our little ones home from the hospital. I never denied her food or sleep. Just made sure to teach her how to fall asleep on her own. I assume you already have the book. We are a baby whisper success story! One thing we did was type out an empty schedule in 15 min time slots for the 24 hours. I then logged exactly what she did for a few days to see exactly what was going on anytime their was a problem. That may be a good thing for you to do so you can see exactly how long she is sleeping at different times, how much she is eating, etc. Their might be a pattern that you haven't noticed. Best of luck!

Ah -yes-the vast expanse of the crib-it is necessary for training to have "Littles" in her own room:( for this. You may not realize this, but the most intelligent form of life on the planet is the human baby-they "cue" off of us when they sleep in our room-they hear us roll over, or clear our throats, or sniffle-then they make a little sound, then we perk up-and so on and so forth-and it's game on! Everybody's awake! Kiss her on her precious little head for me and God bless!

My pediatrician did tell me that babies don't really straighten out their nights and days until three months, something to do with sarcadian rhythms, I am sure I didn't spell that right!! But both of mine were going like 6-7 hours at a time right around 7-8 weeks. The main thing as someone else mentioned is weight, I think once they are over 10lbs, it is fine to let them sleep longer. The thing with babies is they are so different and if you have the luxury of letting them be on whatever schedule is the norm for them, sleep is just so much easier. Sounds like you might have kind of a natural night owl on your hands. So, since you have three weeks, you can start gradually putting her to to bed like 15 minutes earlier. If you are nursing, how about bath, cuddles, nurse to sleep and then put her down. If you are bottle feeding, then you can cuddle up and feed her after a nice relaxing bath. My babies always fell asleep right on the breast, I put them down asleep and they both go to bed just fine now, so if she will fall asleep while eating that would be awesome. Hopefully she can make it to 3 or 4 am, but if she wakes just some feeding and holding/rocking and back to bed. She may only have 5 hrs in her before she needs to eat, she is still tiny, babies really are different. But she does need sleep, so feed her, and then just put her full and cozy back to bed. Now I believe that at her age, cry it out is just not cool. But if she scrumps and cries a little bit, that is fine. The main thing is to slowly bring her bedtime down in 15 minute increments. She doesn't know what time it is of course and it will give her body clock time to adjust to change. Good luck!!!