Baby is terrified of cot

[BuddingBaker]

Really want some advice here, apologies for the long post.

So, my little girl is 10 months old now and has always been a bit up and down with her sleep, sometimes sleeping through and sometimes waking for hours in the middle of the night. We have had months where she's settled fine in her cot but more recently she's been in the bed with us because of teething. Not a problem.

On New Years Day she had the tooth to the left side of her upper left front tooth erupt then the upper left front tooth erupt the day after. We were expecting it as she was really suffering with teething over the christmas period and would sleep from about 9pm to midnight then be up crying and fussing at her mouth until finally falling asleep again at about 5am. Not great, but we managed and found that co sleeping helped a bit. On Boxing day, my parents and sister were staying and my little one didn't nap all day because she was excited. She fell asleep at about 7pm but woke again at 9pm crying, my partner picked her up and she fell asleep on him pretty quickly which is normal for her when shes teething.

Ar this point, my mum insisted we put her back down because 'she shouldn't be sleeping on you, it's bad for her'. My partner and I dont agree with this but my mum has been criticising our co sleeping for months, telling us we need to leave her crying etc and didnt believe/accept that the crying it out method simply isnt for us. We put her down, and sure enough she was crying as soon as she touched the mattress. This is pretty standard when shes teething, she gets pretty clingy and generally seems to need the comfort of being held more which we prefer to giving calpol. I picked her back up and soon enough she was asleep again.

At this point, my mum asked to try and settle her to sleep in her cot, telling us we needed to let her cry it out and it was bad for her to not sleep in her cot. We reluctantly agreed and my mum took her upstairs. Within seconds, my little one was crying so I took a bottle of milk up for my mum to help soothe her and left her with my little girl gradually calming in her arms, gently rocking her. All fine. Within minutes, the crying started again and gradually got worse until my little girl was shrieking high pitched in between cries, clearly very distressed. My partner and I found this very difficult as we are quite laid back people and really dont like the idea of leaving our baby to cry herself to sleep, particularly as she has started getting separation anxiety and often cries and gets very clingy when one of us gets our coat on ready to go to work or sometimes even when we leave the room.
After about 10 minutes of this crying, I went up to check on my very distressed daughter and my mum was sat outside the room, smiling and saying she was 'putting it on' etc, hadn't even offered her the milk I brought up. This annoyed me a bit as I know my daughter and can tell when shes crying to get attention when when shes crying because shes genuinely distressed but I agreed to let my mum continue for a little longer and went back to my partner. 20 minutes later we couldn't stand it any more and went up, said it clearly wasnt working and then spent 30 minutes trying to calm our little girl down. She was very upset and clingy and didnt want cuddles with my mum for the rest of the evening.

She has since been sleeping in our bed because her sleep has been particularly bad thanks to teething. My issue is that I have tried to put her in her cot a few times now, sometimes for a nap and others just to play for 5 minutes while I get dressed etc and every time I take her near it she instantly cries, shrieks and absolutely hates it. She has never been this bad before, at her worst maybe ten minutes settled in the cot before crying, but I cant even put her in it without her getting very distressed and taking a long time to calm down afterwards. She genuinely seems quite upset by the cot but will happily sleep if we put her down in our bed or snuggled on a blanket on the rug. I'm worried that she is scared of being left again and dont know how to help her relax and feel comfortable enough to sleep in her cot again. Had anyone else experienced anything like this?

I'm meant to be taking my partner to london overnight for his birthday in march and had initially arranged for my mum to baby sit but she has told us that she 'wont have any of that nonesense' when she looks after our little girl and will leave her crying all night if she has to. My partner and I feel really uncomfortable about it but my dad and his mum wont be around to baby sit instead so I'm hoping we can get her comfortable enough to sleep in her cot by then, I just really dont know how to go about it. She seems terrified of it.

I have an Auntie who has had 8 children, all of whom are now grown up and gone on to university have successful careers, their own homes, and families despite not being a well off family, education was important and kindness and they had a v caring home, shared bedrooms. When I had my first, I asked my Auntie for advice and lovely person that she is said to me, I cant really give you any advice, but to go on your instinct as a mum.

If your instinct is that your mum is not going to care for your baby as you would want it cared for, dont leave it alone with your mum. Booking that time away was prob pre-baby optimism of the possibilities once you had a baby! Also why arent you giving calpol ... is your baby allergic? Seems so cruel not to if no medical reason.

My mum who is a brave, forthright, no nonsense sort of person believed in a very traditional way of dealing with babies ... regimented routine for sleep, cuddles, food and apparently I was amazing and slept thru because of it and pottied early and all the rest! With my daughter it was all on demand and she never slept through until 4 year's old ... the two extremes! With my son, I took a more middle way and he slept thru much sooner. (I always had them in their own rooms though and would simply go in their room.)

No easy answer to this, but you may need to cut down your mum's caring or try and redirect her to food shop, ironing etc!

Thank you all for your advice.

Just to be clear, we do give her calpol as and when needed, particularly if shes teething, we just try giving her a cuddle first as about 50% of the time that will be enough to soothe her back to sleep. I'd never leave her in pain but on the other hand don't want to give it unnecessarily so if she falls asleep in my arms without calpol I wont wake her up just to give it to her. That being said, if she doesnt start settling fairly quickly we'll give her calpol.

I should say my mum is really good with her in every other aspect, it's just sleeping that I have issues with her behaviour. As one or two of you have mentioned, she is very 'by the book' and believes I should be doing all the things she was told to do when she had me and always brushes off the advice I've recieved from the health visitors or midwives unless she agrees with it. She drives me mad at times because shes the sort of person who can never accept when she is wrong and if you try and tell it to her face she'll just shout you down.

Both my partner and I agree we shouldn't have left our little girl with her so long, we feel very guilty about it, especially now she wont go anywhere near her cot. I think we only allowed it because we had both barely slept (not little ones fault, I've been quite ill and my partner was coming off of a night shift that morning and got about 3 hours sleep before family arrived) and after 10 months of criticism from my mum about how we put baby to sleep, co sleeping etc it did make my partner and I doubt ourselves a little bit and agreed to try it as a result, particularly as we know of colleagues who have used the cry it out method successfully. My mum was constantly telling me about times when she'd left me crying for 2 hours straight as a baby then came in and I smiled so she 'knew it was put on' which I dont agree with but at the same time she raised two children of her own and I've always been close to my family so I trusted her enough to try and see if it would be a potential method to use in the future.

As for my mum babysitting, at the moment I will definitely not be allowing it unless her attitude changes. She'll be hurt, but my baby comes first. My sister lives in London and is really good with my little girl so I'm going to ask her to look after the baby for a few hours whilst we're there as we've got theatre tickets etc for my partner's birthday that wont be appropriate for a baby. I know it isnt an important trip but it wad meant to be the first time since the birth my partner and I can do as a couple so it would mean a lot for us to be able to go. Luckily my sister is very responsible and would look after my little girl exactly the way I tell her to so I have no issues with her babysitting.

There's some great suggestions, thank you all. We used to have a travel cot downstairs for her to play in and to keep her close for naps but it got broken and I'm currently waiting for a replacement which has a door that can be opened in one end so baby can crawl in or out. I'm hoping that will help as she wont be trapped. Aside from that, I like the idea of having the cot alongside our bed so we're still close and if she ends up in our bed, it's not a massive issue. She just takes up a lot of space for someone so small! We have no issue with keeping her in our room a little longer if that's what it takes for her to feel happy and comfortable going to bed.

Your mum sounds like a bit of a cow frankly. Your baby - your parenting methods. In my humble opinion you can NEVER give a baby too much love. Co-sleeping is lovely, but not for everybody. I co-slept with mine whenever they wanted, and trust me, they're all fully-fledged feminist adults now!

(PS - my own mother had similar ideas and I wouldn't let her anywhere near my babies.)

We're very much the same, she gets a lot of love and attention from us and to be honest, we'd miss her in the bed if we're stopped co sleeping. It's so lovely to be woken by a smiling baby whispering 'ma ma ma' in your ear.

I have to say, my mum definitely isnt at her best recently. I know shes struggling a lot as her dad died recently and her mum is unwell, plus she's lost a lot of money taking time off work to care for her mum so shes very stressed. But, that doesnt excuse her in the slightest. It'll really upset her not to be trusted to look after the baby but hopefully that will at least make her reconsider her approach and respect our parenting style more. I think she struggles to separate the roles of parent and grandparent, and I find she can be quite critical, condescending and generally just treat me as if I'm still a child a lot of the time. I know she is trying to help in her own way and I genuinely dont think she realises how she comes across a lot of the time. Shes really good with my little girl with everything else - she'll sit and play with her, help her practice walking, given good advice with feeding etc, it's literally just anything to do with her sleep that we have issues and that's simply because she doesnt agree with our approach and refuses to even consider that crying it out just isnt going to work for us.