Sleep advice please...

tinaraye

Here's our evening routine: I nurse DD to sleep around 8pm, and put her into her crib after about 45 mins of being asleep. (Anything less than 45 mins and she wakes up immediately) Between 8pm and midnight (when we usually go to bed), she typically wakes up twice and needs to be rocked back down; each time it takes like 30 mins. Finally, when we go to bed she comes with us. (She usually wakes up on her own around our bedtime.) 

The rest of the night we bedshare and she might sleep nurse a couple of times. I'm fine with the co-sleeping part of the night. It's those first few hours that are killing us.

How old was your baby when he or she stopped needing your help to go to sleep? When will this improve? I'd love to lay her down drowsy and then she just goes to sleep, but this has never worked with her. I like to think we'll get there one day!

TiffanyBerry

Every kid is so different.  At 23mo, DD still doesn't go to sleep on her own, and I'm in there laying with her (no more rocking/bouncing - that was a difficult enough transition to just laying in bed).  What worked for us was to figure out what we *could* do.  She couldn't be put down "drowsy but awake" and at 12 months was getting backbreaking to swaddle and bounce for an hour (literally), so it was just a "get creative and work through it".  You'll have some intuitive sense of what (at a minimum) your LO is going to need (though sometimes we want to ignore that intuition because it's just so depressing :P), and from there, find a middle ground that you can work with.

pixieprincss

DS is 15 months and still likes to be cuddled to sleep (we nurse to sleep maybe 50% of the time because he's self-weaning and that is when he is open to BFing, but it is no longer a sleep need).  To me, this seems like just one of those things that will pass naturally, but since you are asking for ideas--would your LO sleep better if she started the night in your bed even if you were not yet in it? What time do you go to bed? Could you try getting in bed (with her) rather than doing the second rocking? I'll get DS aseep and then if I am not ready to sleep, I'll stay in place but read a book with a flashlight, use my computer in the dark with headphones, etc.