I started the no-cry sleep solution a short while ago with 9 m.o. DD. She has successfully mastered phase one, which for us consisted of (for bed time) giving a BF until stopped actively feeding, rocking in the chair until drowsy, transferring to cot, she turns on to tummy and then I 'rock' her bottom back and forward until asleep, making 'shhing' noises. She wakes once or twice a night and I feed (not to sleep) and then rock etc as above.
For naptime I'd give her a feed in her room, she's still wide awake and then I'd rock her in my arms until drowsy. I judged this by when she'd closed her eyes and I could feel her body relax. Then transfer to cot, she opens eyes and turns on to tummy and I follow previous routine with bottom-rocking and shhing. She naps well once asleep, 2 hours in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon.
It has been working consistently well for about four days in a row so yesterday I decided to move on to phase two. My plan for this was to follow the above, and transfer to cot once she closed her eyes but not totally relaxed as above. I have tried yesterday and this morning's nap. Yesterday morning went well but she was that knackered from her swimming lesson that she would've slept any where. Yesterday afternoon we had a screaming fit and I reverted to phase one so that she didn't miss her nap. Tried again this morning and because she's not as drowsy as before she's awake before I transfer to her cot and when I put her down she's wide awake again and won't lie down, crawling around and pulling herself up on side of cot.
I know that it's early days, but I just can't see how to progress this stage if she's not going to sleep and thinks it's play time. And it's easy to revert back to phase one because I know how to do it now :). I really want to persist with it though, is anyone able to advise me/tell me what I'm doing wrong and share how they did it?
Apologies for the novel, I just wanted to describe exactly what I was doing :).