Hey! So I've been doing the shush pat in the crib with my 9 week old for a few days now. He uses a paci each time. I've gotten to the point where I can now lay him down wide awake, put the paci, shush pat for a bit and walk out. He will suck himself to sleep. My issue now is that if it falls out before he's in deep sleep, he wakes up. This results in either no naps cuz it falls out before he's in deep sleep, or 45 min naps cuz he wakes at the sleep cycle and needs his paci. When I walk in to put it back in he just smiles at me and won't go back to sleep.
I'm getting annoyed of having to stand there for 20 something minutes to make sure it doesn't fall out. In fact I've refused to replace it and I'll let him cry for a minute or two, go in, put it back in and shush pat again. This can go on for the entire duration of nap time, at which point I decide to just hold him with the paci and pat his butt for at least 30 min so I know he got some kind of nap so I don't have a super cranky over tired baby.
Bedtime he will go bananas if I even attempt the routine without the soother. Routine is as follows:
Bath + massage
Nurse in dark room
Swaddle + burp over the shoulder and read a story and keep him upright to help his feed stay down (his eyes are usually closing during this, no paci, so I put him down, he wakes up, I shush pat but he will have none of it until I put the paci in his mouth, so I give it to him, and shush pat till drowsy, I walk out and he sucks himself to sleep)
He usually will stay asleep, paci will fall out, he will fuss sometimes but he goes right back to sleep with no intervention
So at night he can settle himself usually. Even his 4:30am feed, I'll put him down, sometimes he will wake, and fuss, but I leave him to it as it's never a cry and he will go back to sleep.
So what do I do about this damn pacifier?! He needs it for all his naps which basically means I need to hold him so I can keep it in his mouth. It's also causing a bit of an issue at nighttime.