| When I was a new mother I had the same worry “How would my baby get to sleep without me?” I was on my maternity leave but had to return to work soon and every time my daughter needed to sleep I feed her.
I went to my first LLL meeting when my daughter was five weeks old and a second time mother there said a throw away line but it was a lifesaver for me, “Everyone has a different way to settle a baby.” And it is true. As a breastfeeding mother my way was to feed her to sleep. My husband would hold her up on his shoulder and talk her to sleep. My mother would rock her to sleep and my father gentle pat her to sleep (we lived together with my parents for six months while my daughter was a baby).
When I started work these other ways worked but when I was home I continued to feed her to sleep. This was more for me than anyone else – I loved the excuse of feeding the baby to getting help with all the other household chores! There is no better way to get my husband to help than saying. “I’ve going to feed the baby now, could you take over making dinner? I’ll come and help once she’s asleep.”
Little babies don’t have habits – they have needs. Can your baby go to sleep by herself now? If not then she already has the “habit” of needing you to help her get to sleep. She may or may not still need your help as she gets older. But wait until it is a problem for you before you try to change things. Babies change as they grow. Just because she does something at three months there is no guarantee that she’ll do it at six or twelve months.
Do you know about the arm test for sleep? Lift the baby’s arm up – if it is a dead weight and falls straight down – then the baby is asleep. If there is any resistance then the baby is still awake (even if she looks asleep).
Don’t worry about worrying. It is part of the motherhood package – we’d question whether or not you were really a mother if you didn’t worry. And remember worrying works – almost everything you worry about doesn’t happen!  |