I have been on a discovery mission in the last three weeks on how to put a baby to sleep. Thus far, I have been very successful and infact better than the misus, but definitely not without help.
After 20 to 25 minutes of feeding your baby is ready to sleep. Count yourself the luckiest couple if your baby sleeps immediately after feeding. You may choose to skip this post, comment if you have to and move on. If you don’t have a baby yet, you should go till the end of this post and also make notes.
For those unlucky folks whose baby does not sleep right after feeding, welcome to parenthood. Now for the preachy bit.
First thing you do is to make her feel comfortable. Babies like to be warm. So wrap her to make her warm. You would see an adorable smile once you do this. Don’t think that she is smiling at you. She is happy about the situation. Some babies sleep immediately. But most don’t.
The next thing is to get her into the zone. Babies are least bothered about the toys you wave infront of them. But they like when you talk. Atleast mine does. So i talk to her about anything and everything. The point is not to stop inbetween. Keep talking. She would have stopped crying at this point and would be listening to whatever you talk.
The next item on the list is to start singing a lullaby. Lullaby need not exactly be a lullaby but some kind of soothing music. It is important for the parents to sing because the baby feels happy when she hears her parents. I have started to force Illayaraja on her. In her first week she liked whenever I sang “Ilaya Nila” song. Now she has evolved and wants me to sing “Pala Palakura Pagala Nee” from Ayan. The idea is to try and sing a lot of songs till you find what she likes. The song plus a gently swaying movement is heaven and she sleeps in a while. Keep holding her for a few more minutes. 10 to 15 may be. Keep singing, keep talking and there she is sleeping beautifully in your hands.
The last and final item is hope. Hope that she continues to sleep for the next couple of hours ateast. Even if she doesn’t, hope that there is a vacant bed in the dorm in your office the next morning. This is very important as we all know that hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies 
At the end of the session, you would have spoken to the baby more than what you have to your spouse till date, you would have sung 100 songs and songs that you thought you never knew, you would have wrote a song for your baby. Yeah she brings out the creative best in you.
Happy parenting
