Ok, I'll try to keep this brief, and I'm well aware that sleep problems can be lots worse than this (mostly because I have experienced several)...
DD has never been great at self settling. The best we ever got was a phase of leaving her to shout for 15ish mins and then she would conk out. I never liked it and things like teething/ jabs/ etc interrupted my resolve to leave her for that long IYSWIM so we have gradually got out of the habit of it. Now we are in a rubbish situation where every nap and bed time she will do her best to fight sleep, standing up arsing around in her cot until she is knackered and then has a meltdown. At present I stay in her room for the whole time. I pick her up and do cuddling and shushing for a couple of minutes when she gets really overwrought. If this did actually comfort her I'd probably be quite happy, but actually nothing comforts her - not cuddling, singing, shushing, patting - nothing. And so she more or less just carries on having a real paddy until she finally goes to sleep. Most of the time this happens when she is actually in her cot, not being held. I am always tempted to just leave her to get on with it as me being there honestly doesn't seem to comfort her, but the thought of doing nothing to try to help just makes me feel like such a witch. If I could just get her to stay calm and not work herself up, I think she'd be able to self settle and we'd all be much happier. Sorry for essay and hope this makes sense. Oh, and yes we do have a routine, including bath, story, milk, bed etc and I know she is tired when I put her down.
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ugh. self settling with 11 month old. tips on calming, anyone?
passmyglass · 18/07/2012 13:40
Tertius it's very heartening to hear that someone else is in the same boat 
. Your reply helped give me the courage to bite the bullet and toughen up a bit. So... my new plan is to do usual bed routine and leave plenty of timee for it, to try and get her nice and sleepy; quick cuddle; pop in cot with a couple of cuddly toys for comfort; and exit despite wails of protest. After initial horror at being left, she tends to quickly settle to shouting with occaisional breaks for wandering around cot. Then I'm going to wait and as soon as she sounds upset (rather than just pissed off) I'm going to go back and administer cuddles until calm (but not asleep) and repeat. I've found from past experience that popping in too frequently seems to work her up. So my aim is to be firm and save my sanity but not cause her distress. I hardly dare say it, but this seemed to work quite well tonight. What do you think of my plan? Delighted to hear of your mere 5 mins crying, hurrah, we will win! 
tertius I'm persevering with it. I can't say that she's falling asleep much faster, but she's certainly not taking any longer and I am feeling a lot more sane
Napping - hmm: It's not easy and we've done a fair bit of playing around with this recently, as I think she's perhaps verging on being ready to drop to 1 nap (she's a very lively little thing), but have concluded that she's still just about in the 2 nap bracket. Think she's also playing up slightly because she's vvv close to walking unaided (eek).
We have settled on in cot for morning nap somewhere between 9 and 10 (usually 9.30), and In cot anytime between 1 and 2 for afternoon nap. Finding 2nd nap much harder. For both naps she has milk in her room immediately before, on my lap and listening to white noise. (this means that in order for her to be hungry enough for milk, she has lunch at half 11, which seems to be very well received). For the morning nap, this usually gets her nice and drowsy, with eyes drooping but not completely shut, and then when she finishes the bottle, I can just pop her in, she lets out a little protest, rolls over and goes to sleep. For the afternoon nap it works about half the time. The other half of the time, we then have quite a big battle, or occasionally she just refuses afternoon nap altogether, and then we have a horrid rest of the day.
I know everyone says you shouldn't use milk as a prop to go to sleep. This is a very new tactic for us, and I know it may come back to haunt me, but for the moment it makes life much more pleasant. How are your naps?
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