My nearly 5 month old has always been difficult to get to sleep and I have had to walk, pat and shush, and use white noise to send her to sleep. I can sometimes transfer her to a bouncer seat once she is completely out, where she will nap for about 30 mins but if I want her to have a decent sleep (1hr plus) she needs to be on me or my husband.
Her night sleep is amazing - although we have to work to get her to sleep and keep her asleep for the first couple of hours, she sleeps through on her own in her sleepyhead until 6 or 7 am and has done for about 6 weeks now.
I am finding her daytime naps quite stressful because I keep reading so much about the importance of self settling and not napping on us and how by not teaching her that now we are setting ourselves up for awful sleep problems later! But then some people say that sleep is developmental and if we just keep doing what we are doing eventually she will self settle and sleep in her cot on her own for naps and at night time.
We tried pick up put down last night and after the second pick up she was hysterically crying for about fifteen minutes like we'd tried to chuck her out the window or something!
So what I wondered was whether any of you found the developmental theory to be true? Or have you found it really crucial to try to teach self settling and sleeping away from you?