Orion has passed the 6-week mark and so I’ve seen my fair share of child health experts lately. Because Tycho was a rabid non-sleeper, I’ve been hitting the experts up with all sorts of questions about sleep and self settling. The holy grail of child health, for the Haggmans, has always been self settling.

My favourite and most trusted child health nurse told me of some recent research that has pinpointed the optimal stage at which you can teach your baby to self settle. Apparently you’ll get the best response from your child once they display all 3 of the following developmental cues:

• tracking and following objects with their eyes
• babbling with an obvious turn-taking pattern (i.e. babble-pause-babble-pause-babble-pause)
• lifting up their head well off the floor when they’re on their tummy.

You can expect those developmental cues to show up between 12 and 16 weeks. That’s when you can try putting your baby in their cot while they’re dozy but still awake. Just what techniques you use once they’re in their cot is fodder for whole books – let alone a blog post – so I won’t go into it here. I find Robin Barker's book Baby Love full of fantastic advice on this and many other issues. Personally, I’ll be hammering the patting technique. Here’s hoping it works!

Cheers

Kate