How do I help one year old to get to sleep without help?

[mscockles]

My DS is 13mo, he always fed to sleep, but over the last few months he has his last feed, is still awake, and needs rocking in our arms to get to sleep. It's lovely and very sweet and cuddly, but so so heavy! If at any point (awake / drowsy / nearly asleep) we put him into his cot he immediately starts crying. How do we get out of this cycle? I don't want to leave him to cry for any amount of time.

We put 14mo DD in her cot, in her sleeping bag with some sort of white noise (we use Ewan the sheep) and sit next to her cot with one hand on her chest and sing her a song.
Tears the first few times, now she lies down grouchily but not upset, we sing to her for a minute or two then say 'night night mummy and daddy love you' and then 'shhhh, shhh, shh' our way slowly out of her room. 9 times out of 10 she's absolutely fine. Other times we go back in and try it again.

My DS is 13 months, he doesn’t feed to sleep, he has his last bottle then I put him down in the cot awake with lullaby music on (it’s just a baby lullaby video from YouTube) he has his star projector on and after about 15 minutes of wriggling about he drifts off. I then pop in to turn the music off, say goodnight and he’s always fast asleep by then.