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I don't.... LOs routine is to have a bottle and once we are done we burp him and put him down awake/drowsy. (He is 6 months, 4.5 adjusted)

Why are you concerned about feeding him pre-sleep? Is this for naps or bed time? I am only speaking about bedtime, naps are not a strong suit in my house

With my boys, I did the bottle to sleep thing until it stopped working - maybe around 4 months. By then, they were way more aware so they didn't always fall asleep. Though sometimes they still did. I put DS2 to bed by rocking or holding him sideways and swaying or bouncing a little. He passes out fairly quickly that way at bedtime. Stroller rides sometimes work for naps.

I used music as a cue. We fed him as soon as he woke up, and then played until he started to show signs of being sleepy. Then we did the same routine right before nap time...checked his diaper, rocked for a few minutes while singing the same songs over and over (I use an ipod dock to play music and sing along) and then put him in his crib. LO is 23 months and we still turn on his music before we leave the room. It only plays 2 songs and then changes to white noise, but I think it helps him settle down right before he falls asleep.

ETA: I only rocked/sang until he was almost asleep and settled and put him in the crib awake...unless I wanted some extra snuggles, in which case I didn't always "follow the rules". Once he had learned to go to sleep on his own, holding him longer on occasion didn't change anything.

For naps I swaddle him, put on the white noise and rock him in the rocking chair until he's pretty drowsy and then put him down.

At night I nurse him and then put him down, but he always wakes up a little in the process.

@Meridian: the 30-40 minute naps can often be a result of missing the initial window for naptime...overtired babies sometimes have a harder time transitioning between sleep cycles. You could maybe try putting him down a little bit sooner. That always seemed to help us.

@Meridian: I will add at bedtime, he is totally fine being put down awake and just dozes off and sleeps for 9-12 hours straight.

@Meridian: We also use music as a cue (like @Mrs. Lion:). The way we did it is we started pairing a song (we picked Sweet Baby James by James Taylor - definitely doesn't have to be a lullaby) with the bedtime feeding - just singing the same song over and over while I nursed him, toward the end of the session when he was getting drowsy. Over time, he started associating the song with sleep, and we were able to shift the song back so that our routine is now: change diaper, feed, sleep sack, down in crib, give him his lovey, sing song, go to sleep. We sing it before naps, too, and also have played it in the car on long car rides to get him to fall asleep.

The key is to pair the cue you want to associate with sleep (e.g., a song) with the existing sleep cue (i.e., feeding) and then gradually separate them. It's basically classical conditioning if you remember that from intro psych! (I have a phd in psychology so this was the way that made the most sense to me...)

My LO learned to fall asleep on her own through sleep training.

@Meridian: We started from the very beginning, so we never had to do sleep training. I think having a very sleepy newborn helped though. He always pooped during feedings, so if he would fall asleep during a feeding we would change his diaper, and that would always wake him up just enough. I would have been okay with sleep training for the purpose of teaching him to fall asleep on his own, but we were lucky that following eat play sleep was enough for us. We never had to do any sort of formal sleep training (although we also started from the beginning counting to 30 before we get him when putting him down or during naps...usually that 30 seconds is enough to tell whether he was just making noise (he was a noisy sleeper) or really needed us.

Your LO is only 16 weeks so I'd say just go with it. I used to bf DD to sleep every night until she was about 8 months then she stopped wanting to be nursed so we changed bedtime routine and now I rock her in our glider, read her two books and then put her down in her crib with a little lullaby. I would have kept nursing her to sleep though if she hadn't quit on her own..... She goes down for both naps and bedtime while awake and puts herself to sleep.

I like the music or lovey association and then separating it from existing ones like nursing/rocking! I'm gonna try it with DD; she is 2 mos so we are not doing any sleep training but I do need to start teaching her to fall asleep!

My 11 month old stills nurses to sleepy sometimes! A lot of time she doesn't but allowing her to do it didn't create some bad habit. If it's working for you both there's no need to stop!

@Mrs. Lion: @MenagerieMama: We also use ocean white noise! I ended up with it because one day I discovered that the Mamaroo I was sitting next to had white noise settings and that was what I could tolerate, so when I moved him to the crib that's what I chose on the Sleep Sheep bunny. And it works like a charm - I turn on the white noise, sign "sleep", and walk away.