Baby cries when DH tries to put to bed

[Skyla01]

My LO is six months old. We've just started gentle sleep training as sleep was awful. Fortunately it's going well and seeing lots of positive changes already. When I put LO to bed there is still some crying but short lived and intermittent. However when DH tries she screams from bath onwards. He is a great hands on dad so not sure why she reacts this strongly to him at bed time. He has managed to put her down but after quite a lot of tears. Now the difference between us is quite stark, wondering whether to keep trying? Neither of us wants LO to be more upset than necessary, but ideally both of us should be able to put her down.

Any advice? Anyone been in this situation- did it get better over time?

No advice I've just always put my LOs to bed... My husband started doing it when my son was 2.5 years maybe? And no problem then no tears etc.

Have you tried doing it together? And your DH could then slowly take over and you take more of a backseat to get her used to him doing it?

Think it’s important that baby is able to settle whoever does the bed time routine, there may be times when one of you cannot do it and it’s hell for baby and the other person. Like pp said both do it and then you back off more and more. Hopefully it gets easier

I'd switch all bedtimes to DH for a week or two.

We had this problem with our 4th. Strange as it never happened with the others! My husband is a very hands-on dad so really no reason for it. We went with the easy option of me doing it until I went back to work when he was 9 month old (I work evenings). What actually worked the best (he still cried but no hysterically) was me not being there. I make sure I say good bye with lots of fuss when I leave and then he knows there's no choice but daddy.

We had this so we switched to dad doing all bedtimes. She was fine within a week and it meant I could actually go out of an evening sometimes. If dad was out then I would put her to bed and she was fine because I have always been her favourite 😂

Thanks for the advice. We had been doing bath together for ages and only just started taking turns. Sounds like a good idea to try doing it together for a while, and maybe leave dad to it after that. I guess because we're sleep training too I don't want to add another complication but "dad training" is probably part of the process too. Going forward I'd definitely like to be able to go out in the evening occasionally and not worry about bedtime!