Sleep issues - pls help
Ladies, I think I need some help. My husband doesn't seem to be so concerned with this but its starting to bother me. DD is 6.5 months, adjusted age is 4.5 months. She will only go to sleep if she has a bottle first. No matter how tired she is, no matter if she just ate an hour ago. She WILL NOT go to sleep without being fed to sleep. I think has just become a bad habit because its obviously easier to give her a bottle and have her go to sleep than to fight with her for hours. I also have a 3 year old to take care of. I have tried swaddling her, rocking her, walking with her, lullaby cds, the soothing methods, pretty much everything I can think of. Its a full on screaming match. I think I am frustrated because my son is such a good napper and sleeper and its hard not to compare. Maybe I just forgot how we got there with him. She will not take a soother until she is pretty much sleeping so that doesn't help at all. She just fights me. I don't know what else to do.....she will start her dayhome in September and I am pretty stressed out about it. Luckily our dayhome provider is a gem and she isn't worried about it at all.
Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!
Re: Sleep issues - pls help
we switched to the babywise method at about 4ish months adjusted. it's a sleep/eat/awake routine. (not schedule... it's still not set in stone what time we do everything...) starting in the morning when she woke up, i fed her immediately, she was awake for a while, then when she got sleepy- she was still full- and i put her down. she was adjusted to this new "routine" within a couple of days. (we'd previously nursed/fed her to sleep everytime she went down.)
i'm not sure if your lo is more addicted to the feeding "prop" than my dd.
another thing that helped was dipping the paci in gripe water. (baby's bliss is the brand we use, it's available at walgreens and health food stores.) it tastes pretty good and it would soothe her a little to calm down and soon she associated it with going to sleep. (like pavlov's dogs! hehe... 
in addition, on the babywise routine she was sttn almost immediately as well. (we had a few days of cio- i'm not sure how you feel about that... we would go in about every 10 mins and "ferber" her... it took her about 20mins the first few days. we were ok with it because we knew it was about routine change, not a need for care.)
now she's almost 9 mos adjusted and she doesn't use anything to go to sleep but the paci. (we're going to try and phase that out around a year adjusted... for speech reasons...) it's so nice to be able to see that she's sleepy and put her down and she goes right to sleep.
hope you find something that works for you guys.. i know how hard it can be! good luck!
Totally this. I waited to respond b/c I sensed this is not the advice you're looking for, but it's way early IMO to worry about this. DS still wants a bottle before bed but we read a book after that every night and then I lay him down. We've done that pretty much since day 1 but I never did "sleep training" until 6 mo (just letting him fuss 5 min, go in to reassure, let him fuss 5 min., go in, etc.) and that helped reduce his night wakings from 4-5 times a night to 3 times a night and him putting himself to sleep initially. I still bf'd when he woke up in the middle of the night. At 9 mo., I tried letting him fuss for 10 min. in the middle of the night too before I went in and he did SUPER well b/c he was ready (as in, he didn't even wake up at those times again on night 2). He sleeps from 7:30pm to 4:30am, I bf him then, and he gets up at 6:30am. I really wouldn't worry at your LO's current age. It's something they grow out of - you could always try letting LO fuss for just a few minutes to see how she'll react. She'll let you know if she's not ready.