Baby sleep - where are we going wrong?

[Cloudy678]

Getting my baby to sleep - naps and bedtime sleep - is so draining and I’d like to know if this is normal or if anyone has advice for us.

baby is 5 months old and since 3 months - based on advice in the books I’ve read - I’ve been working to get a good routine down and get her to have most naps in her cot. The goal I’m working towards is to put her down in the cot and leave the room while she settles herself off to sleep.

however, she’s consistently upset at the idea of going to sleep. I’ve tried adjusting wake windows, giving her lots of fresh air, etc, but It doesn’t matter if she’s put down after 1.5 or 2.5 hours, as soon as we come into the dark room or I put her in her sleep sack she gets upset. We currently have around 20-30 mins of her crying in cot (not always crying, sometimes just lots of frustrated noises/screams and thrashing around but it will build to crying as time goes on).

when she starts properly crying, I rock the cot / shush her / sing, but I don’t think any of these make much of a difference. I try to stay out of eyesight as if she sees me she wakes up more and is twisting round in cot trying to engage with me. Eventually she will sleep for 30 mins to 2 hours (usually 30-40 mins) but I get upset that she’s so upset and worry that I’m doing something obviously wrong. It feels like what we’ve ended up doing isn’t that much different emotionally to cry it out…

The room is dark, she has a comfort toy (which she pulls at and screams into) and I play white noise/ music. Is this normal in terms of a baby settling for sleep? I know some people just put their babies down and they go off happily and quickly - will we ever get to that point?

sorry for long post and thank you for any input in advance 💗

My daughter is 5 months and 2 weeks.After a long time of zero sleep we attempted to sleep train (not crying out method ).
She can be left alone now and will fall asleep if it's her sleep window.
The sleep training we did was removing all the sleep props ,one by one and slowly sitting further and further away from he crib.She did fuss (never purple cry ) but it only asked couple of days.
We are 2 weeks in and saytime sleeping has improved drastically.At night she still wakes up and has trouble falling asleep but she will simply be looking at me and after a while will fall asleep.No crying.

You’re right @TheTonEffect , I shouldn’t have used the word ‘cruel’ on this thread. I wasn’t referring directly to anything the OP said she was doing but still it’s too emotive a word and I really didn’t intend to cause upset.

My 4 month old is the same. Most naps I take him up to his dark room, rock or feed him to sleep. If I can successfully lay him down without him waking, he has 30-40 mins.

To add to it my friend from antenatal class tried the same and there hasn't been improvement yet.
Babies are so different.

This hasn't been my experience. We were very "go with the flow" for the first five months and it meant sporadic sleep times, napping on us, feeding to sleep and then waking up as soon as being put down and many wake ups during the night. We ended up doing the Taking Cara Babies course (its American) and within a week we had a baby who went right down for nap and bed and and slept from 7:30 pm - 730 am. He still does this now at 2 years of age. Routine can be good and it works for a lot of parents.

Honestly I feel 5 months is too little to leave a baby crying and trying to self soothe. I was rocking to sleep or contact naps at that age and my one year old sleeps very well now through the night and goes into his cot awake.

But this started to happen when he was older, about 9/10 months and if sick still wants to be rocked. All the contact napping did no harm. I would ignore wake windows and be guided by your baby, not a book. Looking for sleepy cues and try the self settling thing in a couple more months.