Moving to cot......

[Mummabubbles]

11month dd has mainly co slept with the odd bout of me half heartedly trying her in her cot in her own room, a few rare nights she has stayed there but usually ends up back in bed with me. She has never fallen asleep in the cot but does in my bed obviously with me near. She doesn't feed to sleep or through the night. Daytime naps are taken in buggy, sling or car if we are out and about.
Oh can't bed share so ends up on the sofa and I have to go to bed when she does (between 7 & 8) because she will crawl out of bed if I don't! I'm ready to stop co sleeping now just to get some sense of normality back in our family, I would love to spend some time in the evenings with oh and older dc's.
We parent gently and do not want to do cc or cio, any magic tips on getting a happy baby in her cot??........

[mrsbug]

Can you transfer her to the cot once she's asleep?

[Mummabubbles]

No she wakes every time!

[mrsbug]

I used to feed dd to sleep on a blanket then lift the whole blanket into her cot; would that work? Otherwise can you make your bed safe to leave her on eg. By putting your mattress on the floor?

[CuteLittleToes]

Have you read No Cry Sleep Solution? It's all about gentle parenting and has some good tips/suggestions.

You said sometimes she does sleep in her cot, which suggests that she can, you just have to persevere.

[HugoTheHippo]

Hi OP! We too have been struggling to get DD (6m) to sleep in her cot, we were co-sleeping, but it started to just not work for either of us - we were waking each other up constantly through the night and I was shattered.

We are still definitely not out of the woods yet, but we realised that DD slept well in her pram, so we started by settling her in there at night next to our bed, and it worked well. For the last couple of weeks we have put the pram into her room overnight, and it's been working ok (still have wakings for feeds and the odd grizzle, but much better than before). We've now started putting DD in her cot at the start of each night, even though at some point we end up transferring her to the pram - sometimes after three hours, sometimes after five minutes. Tonight is the first night she has settled herself in her cot (with me just sitting next to it, but not doing anything else). I am crossing fingers! She might be awake and screaming in ten mins, but I feel like we are making progress.

DH and I discussed it and agreed that we just won't see much other each other in the evenings for a few weeks as one or other of us will be sitting next to her in her room helping her to settle, but we feel likes it's a means to an end to getting our evening and our nights back.

Sorry, no real tried and tested techniques, just someone who's going through something similar! We have been reading No Cry Sleep Solution too and picked up a few tips from that, but it's very much mix and match. Good luck!