The Soothing Carousel: A mild "sleep-shaping" technique to teach baby to fall asleep independently & self-settle.

Whether your goal is to teach your baby to fall asleep on their own or learn to connect sleep cycles without your help, this gentle "Sleep Training" method may be the perfect fit for you and your little one!

How does the Soothing Carousel differ from other Sleep Training methods?

Generally speaking, formal sleep training methods rely heavily on the baby to learn to fall sleep independently with minimal intervention from the parents. These methods involve crying, but parents have a peace of mind knowing that their baby is crying only because they are learning a new skill that is difficult and frustrating, not because their baby feels scared or abandoned. These methods have an incredibly high success rate and work best for most families that want to see results quick. On the other hand, the Soothing Carousel is more of a gradual method to introduce baby to some independent sleeping skills. Each cry is promptly attended to, making this method very "hands-on". Results are not usually seen as fast.

	💤 Formal ST Methods	🎡 The Soothing Carousel
⏰Results are seen in	2-4 days	From 1-4+ weeks
😢Crying Involved?	Yes	Very minimal
✅Success Rate	Very high (98% +)	Moderate
🤲Parental Intervention	Low to Moderate	High
🎂Age Range	0 months + but works best for babies over 4 months old.	Up to 5 months old.

Steps of the Soothing Carousel

🩵 Step 1: Your Presence

Either come into the room if you weren't in it before, or if you already were, come closer to your baby.

🗣️ Step 2: Verbal Reassurance

Quietly hum, sing, or talk to your baby.

🤲 Step 3: Touch

Pat, stroke, put your hand on baby, or give baby your finger to hold.

🍼 Step 4: Pacifier

Give your baby a pacifier. If your baby does not take pacifiers, skip this step.

🤗 Step 5: Pick-Up

Snuggle your baby.

How to Move Through the Steps

• Start with Step 1 when baby starts to cry (either when you put baby down to teach them to fall asleep or when baby wakes up to teach them to connect sleep cycles).

• The goal is to implement a step only until baby is calm and let them fall asleep independently from that calm state.

There are 3 ways your baby may react to a certain step:

👉 Baby is soothed. Great! Keep implementing that step only until baby is calm. Once they are calm, leave them be and wait for them to fall asleep.

👉 Baby is soothed but withdrawing makes them start crying again. This is still good progress! Keep implementing the step until baby is asleep.

👉 Baby is not soothed. No worries! Move onto the next step.

Move through the steps. It will take several rounds until baby is finally asleep. This method doesn't have Carousel in the name for no reason.

Can this method be used with a Smart Crib / Bassinet like the SNOO or Cradlewise?

Absolutely! In this case, before Step 1 you would implement an extra step which would be to either bump up motion to a higher level or turn on motion if it was not used before.

What if my baby is only able to fall asleep while I am actively implementing a Soothing Step?

The goal is to have baby fall asleep independently once they are in a calm state after you finished implementing a step. This is to prevent introducing a new sleep association which baby will end up needing to sleep later down the road (we don't want this to happen!). So if you notice that your baby got into the habit of only being able to drift off to sleep during a particular soothing method, you will need to keep doing what you are doing but stop soothing once you notice that your baby is getting drowsy. It may look something like this:

You put baby down, they start crying, and you start soothing. As soon as they are calm, stop soothing. Baby will most likely start crying again. That is okay! Start soothing, stop once calm, and repeat until baby is asleep.

I hope this quick guide was helpful! Remember that your baby is capable of independent sleep (all babies are!). They just need a little help to learn how.

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