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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
Bedtime stress
We've been working on transitioning LO from bedsharing to sleeping in her crib in her room for about a week now. It all looks very promising, she usually does about 3-4 hours in her first stretch, and between 1 and 3 hours in her second stretch, at which point it's usually around 5am and I just bring her back to bed with me, before DH gets up at 6 and brings her downstairs to play/sleep in her swing.
Still, I'm incredibly stressed out in the evenings now. I'm so much more sleep deprived now than I was when we were bedsharing, because the middle of the night feed means I have to REALLY wake up (before she would nurse side-lying, so she could practically latch herself), and I worry constantly now about how long she's going to last before I have to go back in. Which is totally counterproductive! DH is totally relaxed about the whole thing, doesn't understand why I find it so stressful... but then, it's never his responsibility to get up to feed her in the middle of the night, and most of the time he can't put her to bed either (a few nights this week, he's offered to help me put her to bed, only to fall asleep snoring on the couch in front of me while I nursed her and calmed her down. big help.) I think maybe I'd be able to take his "let's just go with the flow" attitude if it didn't always fall to me to take care of her at 2am, you know? 
Am I the only one worrying constantly about when/how to put her to bed? Did everyone else figure this stuff out in the first month? There's just so many variables, I don't know what the best system is to get me and her some good sleep!
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Re: Bedtime stress
I would say to hang in there and don't let DH get away with falling asleep, wake him up for his turn. DS has sleep in his crib from day one but for the last few weeks he went thru a sleep regression where he did not want to go to bed without lots of crying and screaming, I dread bedtime with a passion. I made the rule that once he went in his crib I wouldn't pick him back up, he needed to fall asleep without rocking, nursing or coming to bed with us. The only thing that kept me sane and made this work was DH and I working as a team, we'd go back in the room, give DS the pacifier, a headrub and tell him we loved him again so he'd calm down and eventually fall asleep on his own. Last night he did so good, I watched on the video monitor as he laughed and talked for like 15 minutes then started yawning and fell asleep without a fuss, he slept from 8:30pm-6:30am and was super happy to see me in the AM. I am hoping my letting himself fall asleep on his own is finally going to pay dividends but I could not have done it alone. Now I still need to ditch the sleep crutches of the pacifer and swaddle but hey putting a baby to bed can be impossible so I am doing the best i can.
The bumpie formerly known as First Time in MI
I've found the best approach to getting a spouse to help is to be direct. Dont offer excuses, explanations or anything. Just say, "I need you to do this." If he falls asleep on the couch, tap him to wake him up and offer him the baby. If he starts whining, dont get sucked into that sand trap. Offer him the baby again and simply state again that you need him to do this. It is so important to be clear in your expectations of assistance and not to be emotional about it.
My fiancee is wonderful but he cant multitask to save his life. He takes care of the baby in the mornings and when I wake up I spend the first 10 minutes cleaning up after him. Picking up empty bottles, hanging towels, that kind of stuff. He takes good care of the baby but has tunnel vision. I've decided to shelve that battle until the baby starts crawling.
One of the things I can say is that it might be good to offer visual rewards along with verbal encouragement. It's not that my fiancee doesnt care about my baby or want to help out, I feel that he's just not as plugged in, partially because it's easier for him to let me do everything (not that I let that fly) and partially because while he loves his child very much the connection to our baby is different for him than it is to me. So in addition to tell him things like, "I really appreciate you taking care of [this]," or "I feel so much better now that I've had some extra sleep," I started following him around with the camera.
I wasnt obnoxious about it but when the opportunity presented itself I took some awesome candid shots. Being able to see the photo afterward was a visual reward for him and I refrained from snarky comments like, "photographic evidence that you did change a diaper." One of his favorite pictures came from that. He was taking her back to her nursery for a diaper/clothing change and this is what we took:
I also have some great videos of him playing guitar for her. It sounds dorky, and he's not mugging for the camera, but seeing photos was fun for him and helped motivate him to be more of an active parent.
Another thing that made it easier for him was me giving him a routine. I didnt bark out orders like a drill sargeant, I just stated what I needed him to do. If he offered a suggestion, I would add it into the routine. If he gave me lip without reason, I just stated again what I needed him to do. It worked for us.
As for stressing about when she's going to wake up and stuff, that's psychological. I understand it. There were many a night in the early weeks where I didnt bother to sleep at all because I take a long time to fall asleep anyway so what was the point? I had to snap out of that thinking because I was turning into a zombie, dropping stuff, couldnt find things in plain sight and not being a very fun person to be around.
The same happens to me!
My husband is very supportive and he offers help but he works too much, he is late at home from work and in the facts he doesn't help that much at night (and I don't like bothering him because he's exhausted from work).
My LO is still in our bedroom, but for the last 2 weeks once he wakes up in the middle of the night for BF, he sleeps by my side, and I feed him as you say, side-lying. That way I can sleep a bit more. If I lay him back in the crib, the sleep time is shorter.
We now want to take the crib to his bedroom, but I'm afraid I wont get any sleep.
Somebody told me this by sleeping in a bed by the crib for a month. But no eating in the night. It was the husband who has to sleep in baby's room, and comfort him when we awakes in the night... I'll try (almost with the bed next to him!!).
I've been strugging with this for 2 months now. We transitioned LO to her crib around 3 months when I went back to work, and when the bassinet & R&P seemed too small. She will start out her crib but at some point during the night, the two of us end of in the guest room bed. Her and I both sleep better this way. She definitley sleeps longer when we bedshare. I dread bed time every night, and similar to you, my DH is totally relaxed. I will say the last few weeks I have been trying not to focus on it too much. I know this didn't help but wanted you to know someone is with you.
Good luck!
I forgot to tell that my LO doesn't like pacifiers or bottles... so I'm the pacifier. He may be not hungry at all but he wants me there...
Thank you everyone! I just wanted to update and say that, 5 nights later, things are going SO much better. I've gotten a lot more confident about putting her in her crib, I'm not stressing out as much about how long she's going to stay down, DH and I had a lot of talks about the situation as we walked her around in the evenings to put her to sleep, and he spent 3 of the last 5 nights just sitting in the nursery with me as I nursed her and put her down, as a show of support.
Really made a difference to me to know I wasn't alone if she got wound back up.
She was surprisingly consistent for four nights in a row, sleeping 3 hours, waking to eat, and sleeping another 3 hours before I brought her to bed and then DH took her downstairs. Last night, though... she slept SEVEN HOURS before waking to eat!!! Aaaah! And since she wasn't right next to me all night, I was actually able to sleep 7 hours, too! *dance*
I know it was probably just a fluke, but I'll take it! I'm so glad we're doing this transition now, it's really going to be worth it.