

The idea is that you want to be disassociating feeding and sleeping so she’s not reliant on sucking from a breast or bottle to fall asleep. However you can work on feeding on wake up, rather than put down. There is no fixed schedule at this age as nap lengths can vary significantly one day to another. On those first couple of wake ups, can you offer comfort by rocking or reinserting a pacifier rather than feeding? You don’t want to shift the calories from the daytime into the night. Now you may be defaulting to feeding her to sleep every 3 hours in the night now.

Your baby might have been giving you a 6-8 hour stretch of sleep with 1 or 2 feeds over 11-12 hours at night. Slowly make the transition to a sleep sack. If you don’t want to invest in yet another baby product, you can start swaddling one arm out at night only. The Merlin suit or Swaddle Sleeves can be a useful tool for this transition. Over the next few weeks can you get her used to not being swaddled.
BED FOR 3 MONTH OLD BABY FREE
She’ll need her hands free out of the swaddle with pretty good control of them to be able to self soothe and ultimately be an independent sleeper. On average you want to be starting at 5 minutes of tummy time every awake time and working up to 15 minutes. Tummy time helps strengthen the core which is the building base of rolling. When kids can roll they have more control in positioning their bodies and making themselves more comfortable. The next stage of sleep after 4 months is about encouraging your baby to be an independent sleeper and less reliant on you to fall asleep. What can you do to help your 3 month old sleep in longer stretches and with less help? 1. You’re in a bit of a holding pattern and basically buying time until closer to 4 months to make any significant changes in how your baby falls asleep. However, they are too young to work on self soothing as they often still lack sufficient arm control. At this stage it can be hard to change the way your baby falls asleep without protest from your baby. The challenge is when you hit the 3 month mark and kids start waking up more at night and what sleep looks like to your little one has already been established. Every time he woke in the night, which all humans do, he wanted to nurse to fall back asleep. Personally I taught my son that a boob was a soother and he had to be nursed to sleep. That learning inadvertently happens around 4-8 weeks of age. The drive to sleep is biological, but the way we sleep is a learned habit. She tests this concept out by calling for you when she wakes in the night, which all humans do. She’s starting to learn “object permanence” around 4 months which is the concept that you still exist even though she can’t see you. Your child is waking up to the world around her.
