Thanks for the warm welcome!
We have tried the pat/shush, but it only sometimes works. He just continues crying. The longest I pat/shush was 10 minutes ~ he was crying at the top of his lungs and I couldn't let him cry any longer. When I pick him up, he continues to cry for another 5-10 minutes until he starts to calm down.
He's not swaddled ~ he doesn't enjoy it and stopped swaddingly him at 2 weeks. He likes to sleep with his arms stretch out above his head and he is quite a kicker.
As for his rountine, he usually wide awake after his feedings. Sometimes, I put him in the bassinet with the mobile on, sometimes I carry him around hoping the movement will lull him to sleep. When he's really wide awake, we spend some time playing, talking, etc. But I try to get him to take a few naps during the day. But, the only thing that gets him to sleep is his swing. He falls asleep almost instantaneously. Last night, he was up crying for about 4 hours (he's a bit on the colicky side). We tried rocking him, using the paci, pat/shush, but nothing worked. We finally couldn't take it anymore and put him in the swing. In about 2 minutes, he stopped crying and fell asleep. After 15 minutes, I moved him to his bassinet and pat/shushed him for a few minutes to get to back to sleep.
He uses a paci occasionally. We give it to him when he's been particularly fussy. The problem with a paci is he sometimes wakes up crying when it falls out of him month. We've tried using white noise, the radio, the mobile, CD's with sounds of vacuum cleaner, etc, but he doesn't seem to notice.
Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated. We really want to teach him how to fall asleep on his own.
