Only mommy can put to sleep

[Fien2016]

Hello,

I'm a proud mommy of a 3,5 month old girl. She is touchy and struggled with reflux, but this is now under control with meds. She is on EASY since she was 10 weeks old and doing quite well, also with daytime naps and night sleeps. The only problem is that only mommy can put her to sleep. Daddy is fine for eating (bottles of breastmilk) and activity time (playing, talking, laughing...), but when it he tries to calm her down and put her to sleep, she starts screaming untill I take over. And I know he's doing exactly the same things as I do (same wind down routine, same holding, same shhh-patring,...). Probably this is because I've spent so much time to sleep train her (while daddy was going to work). Does anyone has an idea of how we can teach her that she can also fall asleep with daddy (without letting her scream hee lungs out)? Within a few months she goes to daycare and she also needs to sleep there without me.

Many thanks in advance for all your help!

[ginger428]

Hi and welcome to BW!

Honestly, I'm not too sure what to advise other than taking a few days where he does it for every single sleep time. And possibly have him wear her. At those times, have him wear your clothes! Lol! Or at least put a shirt of yours over his shoulder. I know it sounds silly but I used to leave my worn shirts hanging over the crib (when DS couldn't move to the other end).

Let's see if anyone else has experience with this.

[creations]

Hi there and welcome to BW forums

Please excuse me for not giving a personal response but I don't have a lot of time right now and I saw your post. I recently posted to another thread which is very similar and perhaps reading through that might give you some tips or give Daddy some motivation to keep persevering.
Baby going down easy for one parent but not the other!

I hope there will be some more advice from the rest of the community for you too.

[Fien2016]

Hi,

thank you so much for your replies!!! It really means a lot to me, knowing that there are people willing to help us out!!!

I hadn't seen the other post so thank you for referring me to it.

Yesterday, daddy tried to put our girl to sleep wearing a shirt of me. After a bit of fussing, it worked out to our big surprise. I was in the same room but he was holding her. She was constantly watching me, but seeing me was apparently enough to settle down. We are so glad with that, this is such a big improvement. It will still be a bit of working to learn her to do this without me in the same room, but this is really a great step forward. We actually think that this also worked because we are currently on holiday and therefore daddy is able to spend a lot more time with her during the day as well.

Our holidays even though causes a lot of stress as well. Since we are on the road during the day, she needs to nap on the go (carseat, stroller or babycarrier)  and that really is far from ideal... At home, her naps are fine, but on the go it is a mess. We try to keep the routine, we try to make it dark with covers, we take her lullaby with us, we keep to our wind down routine,... She settles down, but she keeps waking up from every little thing (when the car stops at a red light, when a motorcycle passes by, ...). I know that this is because of her touchiness but it is exhausting for her and for us... The situation already caused a lot of stress on our holiday, so if anyone has some advice, please shoot... We don't want to spent our holidays between the four walls of our cottage, but an overtired baby every evening is neither relaxing... 🙁
(Maybe this is the wrong place to post this, but since I'm new I don't know for sure so excuse me if I'm wrong)

[creations]

It's great news that Daddy has had some success and that using a shirt of yours helped as part of the comfort and wind down, over time the fabric "lovey" can be a great source of comfort for your LO, and will not need to smell of you.  I think you will have seen on the other thread that my DS is attached to muslin squares (lots of them, easy to switch for a clean one).

With regards to your holiday, it sounds like you are already doing everything you can to help LO sleep and retain a routine.  I can't think of anything additional you could do I'm afraid.
Once you are back home you will be able to get back on track though.

[tathi-b]

I had the same issue with our baby.  For about 2 months she refused to be put down by anyone; the rest of the settling down routine was OK to be done by others but she didn't' want to be put into her cot by anyone else other than me. 

In the end I went and got her a lovey (in her case it's a teddy) and slept with it for a couple of nights so it had my smell and now she sleeps with it whenever in her cot.  That helped and she now seems to be OK to be put into the cot by daddy or the nanny.

Hope this helps! x