We bath DD at about 6 pm, I feed her in her room and try to put her to bed. Sometimes she'll go down for 30-45 minutes (occasionally even longer), sometimes she only lasts 5-10 minutes, sometimes she won't settle at all. If I haven't got her settled by 8 pm I tend to give up and bring her downstairs again for the sake of mine and DH's sanity! Then she'll often sleep most of the evening on one of us.
Whichever way it goes, I feed her again when we go to bed and she will almost always settle after that, then sometimes she sleeps through and sometimes she wants another feed in the early hours; after that she's hard to settle and I often bring her into our bed.
The HV told me I should be putting her down sleepy but awake, but if I do she either starts screaming right away or wakes right up, plays a bit and then screams. I think it's because she seems to go very suddenly from a bit sleepy into deep sleep. She only really falls asleep on me or DH, and won't settle in her cot at all for daytime naps. If we're out somewhere she sometimes won't nap at all; she doesn't sleep in the pram.
All this works pretty well for us most of the time, but yesterday we had a family do and all the mums of various generations were talking about sleeping. I kept being told I should be leaving her to cry, and if I left her long enough she'd learn to fall asleep on her own. One mum of my age even boasted she'd managed to teach her DS by leaving him screaming for nearly 2 hours (admittedly when he was 1yo not 4 mo)! I find all this really distressing and don't think I could do it, not least because I have memories (obviously from when I was a bit older) of screaming for my mother after nightmares and she never came. I don't want DD to think she can scream and scream and no one will come. I do want her to learn to sleep well though for all our sakes; do I really have to put us both through the leaving-to-cry thing?
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4mo sleeping - am I doing it all wrong?
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MarriedToSonOfAPreacherMan · 27/12/2012 11:37
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