How to encourage self soothing?

[CaedensMama]

This week I have been sitting by his cradle during his naps and went he jolts or starts to wake I place my hand on his chest and shush - patting is too much for him. It also works best when his arms are swaddled. This usually works to get him past the 20, 30 and 45 min mark. He wakes about half the time between 45-60 minutes and is "done" and I cannot get him to go back down. When he passes 45-60 minutes I can usually get another 45-60 minutes with no help. And I can have some me time!  It's this first half that he struggles with. This really blows my "Y" time, but I am hoping by lengthening his naps it will pay off in the long run. When he wakes early and I can see ge is still tired, I try to just hold him quietly or put him in the swing for the next 30 min or so and hopefully at least get him  some quiet time. Sometimes he is wide awake and happy and we just eat and play!
So - that is what we are doing - we'll see how well it works!

[micah'smom]

jennifer and jaqi,

you should look under the "naps" board and see the thread, "general info on pat-shush" or something like that. when my ds was younger i was going frantic and the moderator there, matthewsmommy, answered a lot of my questions on that thread.

sounds like you two are doing great! ultimately i guess there's no quick fix and they just learn to sleep over time. i was so obsessed about ds's sleep that i had to just chill and enjoy these fleeting moments with him.

hang in there!

[Jaqi]

Thanks. I did find that thread the other day, and it helped knowing that there are other moms suffering the same fate (and that they got through it).

Ever since I found out that it's normal for them to cry at bed/nap time, it's been a little bit easier to understand and deal with it. We're also trying to adapt to what fits with our lo and so far we've had some better days.

He still doesn't sleep for very long, but already we're stretching some of his naps to 45 minutes (from 30 minutes), and his feeding times are also being stretched every day by another 5 minutes.

Though reading his sleepy cues are still a bit difficult, we're getting there and hopefully he'll have longer awake periods one of these days.

Thanks for all the advise!