...to leave her to crawl laps of her cot??

[HellYeahIRememberAurora]

We are having a bad morning here.

DD, aged 1, is normally a fab sleeper (put her down with dummy and snuggly and off she goes). She learned to crawl two wee,a ago and things haven't been the same. You put her down, she just sits bolt upright, crawls, pulls herself up to standing etc. Hour long fight every nap time and every evening now, we're really beginning to dread these times. She is beside herself with exhaustion and yet seems hyper when she's in her cot.

She has been up since 5am this morning, she's now at that exhaustion stage and so am I, in all honesty. I have left her in her cot with the monitor on and have gone to bed (I'm just in the next room) but I'm feeling guilty for leaving her alone in the dark. She's not upset btw, just hyper.

I dunno what else to do

Don't worry. She is perfectly safe in her cot. She will go to sleep eventually and you will hear her if she gets distressed.

I remember this with DD. It's not her fault. She's learned a new skill and her brain has a need to practice it - it's a compulsion. (DD walked at 9 months). As long as she's safe and happy I'd do exactly the same thing.

If she's not crying then she's fine. She'll get over the novelty soon and go back to settling

I used to use a baby cello cd for mine at nap time. Worked like a dream.

I second that. If she's not unhappy she'll wear herself out and sleep - or if not, at least have some 'down time' which will rejuvenate her. In the meantime you'll get some rest which will benefit both of you!

If she's howling unhappy I wouldn't leave her though.

Leave her. She'll be fine as long as she's not crying.

I did this for both of mine and they are mostly well-adjusted.

The best thing to do is to leave her to it provided she is not distressed. She needs to learn to self settle again now that she can move around.

You may need to go in once or twice and lay her down without interacting. They sometimes seem to get "stuck" standing in the early days

Thank you all. She is asleep now (in a crazy upside down position with her legs sticking out between the bars, but asleep nonetheless).

It is like a compulsion! It's like she can't help herself but get up, even if she's half asleep and doesn't want to. Good to hear it'll pass, it's quite stressful/frustrating sometimes!

I don't like to leave her in case she falls over from standing and bumps her head on the wood. She's done that once or twice, but to be fair not over the last few days.

We would never leave her crying and upset, we decided when she came that controlled crying etc wasn't for us.

We end up in a continual battle of pushing her back down (which she finds funny...) but from reading this I think we need to stop doing that, and just let her do her stuff. She doesn't do it at nursery!!

sounds like DS2!

Really, she will be fine if left to it. Although I will tell you a story.....

One night, DH and I were woken by furious screaming. We ran into DS2's room to find that he had got his chubby little thigh (hot night, so just in a bodywarmer) firmly wedged between the bars of the cot. DH (befuddled by sleep) declared 'We're going to have to SAW THROUGH THE BARS!' in tones of high emotion. I looked at him blankly and said 'Or we could use butter.' He gaped for a minute before cottoning on DS2 was freed 5 minutes later and no cots (or legs) were sawn off (although the offending thigh was rather greasy).

So basically you may want to keep a tub of vaseline near the cot for emergency limb extraction.....

Haha -sound advice!! You sound calmer than me, I tend to flap in such situations! PFB and all...

I catastrophise a LOT, but the advantage is that I've now planned for most catastrophes and will hopefully feel calmer if/when they happen....

I remember this when Dd was that age. She used to gurgle happily when she woke in the morning. When she was learning to walk she'd be awake and standing before she knew what had happened, crying because she's jolted herself awake and too sleepy to work out how to sit back down.

As long as she's not upset, it's fine to leave her.