Hello everyone
and especially to any newcomers to this board.
Lisa- Reading your post I would say that you are describing what sounds alot like overtired/overstimulated baby. I'm not sure of your day routine, but the crying when put down in bed is pretty standard while you are sleep training and the biting down on hands and really getting worked up is something I've seen with my dd when she is just tooo tired...They are trying to find a way to comfort themselves and they can get very frustrated. I have written this in another post but at times like these I have had to just hold her firmly in my arms and walk up and down in dark room until she starts to relax.
In Tracys original bw book she describes overtired/overstimulated signs, and also explains that they will sometimes just scream until they are exhausted and finally crash when they are just too wound up to settle.
A couple of things to try..
1.Help your baby to learn to self-soothe ie sucking fingers or thumb
2.Try Tracys
pu/pd tecnique- placing baby down and doing pat shhh, during which he may be crying(quite loudly :shock: ) then pick up and place down again slowly and start pat shhh again.
When over 4months you don't hold baby until they are calm and then put them down as this just makes things worse. You are picking them up only to break the crying cycle and to reassure them that you are there, but you put them down again while they are still crying and continue your pat shh ...REMEMBER if you start pu/pd you have to be prepared that it may go on for up to 45mins, sometimes longer and if you end up rocking baby in your arms, you will have wasted all that crying and time. But if you successfully end up with a baby settled in there cot it only gets better and shorter(time) as they learn that bed is where they will fall asleep, with Mum always nearby offering support
It may help if your ds doesn't have a pacifier, to hold his hands close to his mouth and encourage him to suck them while you do pat ssshh.
Alternatively, you could hold him in your arms until he has gotten to the eye slowly shutting stage of sleep and then lay him down..but be prepared that if he hasn't learnt to settle in his cot he may cry when you put him down in which case you could try the above.
If you put your baby down in his cot when he is sound asleep he hasn't learnt to go to sleep independently.
If you haven't got Tracys first book I would recommend it as it has heaps of good tips.
Hope some of this helps and is understandable
Any questions please ask, I have had good practice and complete success using Pu/PD with both my children, ds was a touchy so we needed to use it quite alot in the early days :wink:
Bianca
