Morning morning.
I'm a bit bewildered by all of you talking about your babies being overtired and having a bed time routine... Our little peanut sleeps when she's tired and wakes up when she isn't - and I've not complicated the matter more than that. She will sleep through the television / hoover / dog barking, whilst being held / in her little rocker - so I haven't been 'putting her to bed', as it were, early in the evening. I'm assuming that this might have to change as she sleeps less in the day. At the moment, however, she has a similar routine to that she had in utero: sleeps all morning, is wakeful in the late afternoon / evening.
The one place she WON'T sleep at night, however, is in her cot. I had reservations about co-sleeping (mainly to do with the pillows / duvet) but she has very firm ideas about it. Her cot is a bedside cot, with the side down between her mattress and ours - but she knows it's not the real deal and won't settle at night unless she's in our bed next to me. This does have the advantage of my being able to feed her in my sleep.
I wondered whether the recent nights of screaming for three hours from midnight might have had to do with her being fractious around evening feeds, only feeding for ten minutes at time and constantly de-latching during that period. Meaning that she's hungry and has terrible wind in the night. The last couple of nights, therefore, I've tried forcing her to feed (i.e. shoving her head back towards the nipple and not letting her fall asleep until she's had a good twenty minutes) and she's gone out like a light at our bedtime, only starting to fuss at 4.30 ish - then she's gone back off to sleep until 8-ish.
Boompi - thanks for the explanation of the ssh / pat thing. I sort of stroke A's back when we're going to sleep - and stroking her eyebrows seems to send her right off for some reason. What are you doing with the hairdryer??
Beatie - had to laugh at your 'just like a puppy' thing. I suspect training puppies is only simple if you own a nice biddable labrador...
Mummyhill - sorry to hear that the black dogs are howling... I was semi-convinced before getting pregnant that I'd get pnd post-partum (just because my temperament generally is a bit up and down - and I'm rather prone to serious pre-menstrual gloom), but I've found that I disliked being pregnant so much, that anything other makes me feel positively sunny. Hope the ADs work anyway...
Rhumba - Mhairi was actually my husband's choice - and we couldn't make a decision between that and Arianwen. The disadvantage of having Mhairi as a first name, though, would be that you just know that she would go through life being routinely mispronounced. At least with Arianwen, there's an outside chance that people might get it right... even if they always double-take when I first say it.