Learnt to nap - won't learn to sleep at night!

[mattDP]

Hi,

Our Baby has always had a lot of problems falling asleep. She's not too bad at staying asleep once she's there but getting alseep in the first place was something she really fought. For most of the first four months of her life we'd rock her to sleep in a baby sling and then try (sometimes unsucessfully) to put her down. This was clearly very time consuming!

My partner, who spends most time at home with baby while I'm at work, eventually got fed up with having an awake baby on her hands all day (and it was pretty much all day every day!) and decided to teach her to sleep in the pram by putting her down, rocking the pram gently and playing some music. Neither of us believed that this would work but amazingly not only did it work but it worked rapidly and with minimal crying time. She now does down for her naps like a dream most days provided we have the pram and the music.

After a couple of weeks we decided to try and teach her to put herself to sleep at night by a similar method. We already had a long established bedtime routine but instead of the sling we tried to get her sleepy (not asleep) by cuddling or feeding and then put her in the crib, play some different music and rock the crib. We've been trying this for nearly two weeks and it's failing miserably. Not only that but she actually seems to have got worse at putting herself to sleep - I'm worred what she's actually "learning" is to fear a state of sleepiness because then she gets put down.

We don't know what else to do, but the current situation has become intolerable. We don't want to let her cry it out (we're doubtful it'd even work) and we're totally perplexed as to why she adapted so rapdily to napping but is so resistant to going down at night! Help!

Cheers,
Matt

P.S. Can I also applaud Mumsnet in general for making a stand for continued free speech on the internet? Well done!

[lazycow]

I wish I could help but my ds always fought both naps and bedtime then he went through a phase of fighting naps not bedtime, now at 21 months he fights bedtimes but rarely fights naps.

Can you just enjoy the nap success and go back to using a sling at night for a while if it works? My view has always been if works don't fix it