How do you settle a 2 month old at night? (long one sorry!)

[boompi]

We have a lovely little 8 week old girl and thank our lucky stars she hasnt been too much of a handful so far. But, I am getting slightly worried about what our future holds as we have a lot of difficulty in settling her at night. I bath and feed her and then try put her down in her cot but she just wont settle. She grizzles and fusses for a few minutes and then starts to cry. I think shes too little to be left to cry for longer than a few minutes so we go in, comfort her and put her back down. This can go on for a couple of hours and tires dh and I out. So we take her back downstairs with us and she falls asleep in our arms - usually between 930pm and 10pm. (She usually has woken from her nap at 4pm and I try put her down at about 730pm)
Ive tried a routine during the day, no routine, cluster feeding, swaddling(she hates it), dummies(helps sometimes) etc.
Having her down with us isnt a problem and she is a good baby otherwise but are we encouraging bad habits? Everyone says teach them to fall asleep on their own but also say not to let such a little baby cry? What is in between?
What can we do or can we just leave it as is for a few months?
She loves sleeping a bit late in the mornings ie feeds at 7am and then has a nap till 9am which I am grateful for (Im a real night owl) but guess this could be the problem? Rest of the day she feeds every 3 hours and has another hour nap at midday and again at roughly 3pm. (Times are all approx - I gave up on Gina Ford type routines - just not for me)
I know we are not suffering like some but would welcome any suggestions from more experienced mums. This is my first child.

Message withdrawn

just leave it. Let her stay up until she is sleepy, and stop worrying about a 'proper' bed time. She doesn't understand the clock yet

That is the sleep pattern ds had at that age, and he goes to bed 9pm til 9 am now, at 2.5!

Just cuddle her to sleep if she wants to, she's still tiny and there will come a point when she won't let you and you will miss it. She will settle into a pattern, the only tip I have to give you is to keep the hours for bed dark and quiet, and the hours for being awake noisy and bright.

Good luck

Boompi, let me tell you a story. Up until ds was about 7wks I used to spend the whole evening BF until he eventually stayed asleep when I put him in his cot. (Sometimes from 6-10pm!) I thought (after reading GF &BW, etc..) that this was ridiculous and ds needed to learn to fall asleep by himself in his cot. So we introduced a dummy at bedtime and it was magic at getting him to sleep in his cot. A couple of months down the line the dummy was not getting him to sleep at night any more, and he was rocked in his pram to get him to nap in the day. So we had a week or so of BF to sleep at night again until he found his thumb. I was insistent that he should go down awake, so I would feed him, put him in his cot and leave the room. A few times he just sucked his thumb and fell asleep by himself, but more often than not he would start crying after a few minutes. Occasionally he would respond to shushing or a cuddle but I usually ended up BF again. By 5mths it was impossible to put him down awake but I felt that BF him to sleep was wrong, I was so worried about creating 'bad habits'. Words of wisdom from some lovely MNers made me realise it wasn't wrong so that's what I've been doing for the last 2 mths. Sometimes I feel like I'm back to sqare one because we are no closer to getting him to go to sleep on his own, but then I am not really trying to anymore. He has never been a great sleeper and is still up in the night but I reckon it is more important for babies to have positive associations with bedtime (i.e. not being left to cry, etc..) than it is to worry about potential 'bad habits' forming. The books make you feel that if you do xyz to get your baby to sleep at 2mths then you'll be doing the same til they're 18! Not true is it? Why should little babies have to settle themselves to sleep? So just do whatever it is you do to get your lo to sleep and don't worry about 'bad habits'.

Good luck

boompi she is fine! ds never went to bed earlier than us until he was around 6 months old!
she cries because she wants to be near you, because you make her feel safe and secure and she likes being with you... there's nothing wrong with that

sleeping through the day at this age is also fine. she will probably only want to be awake for a couple of hours at a time and then nap for a while... this is all normal

what we did with ds was have his little crib in the sitting room with us. we used to put him in it when we went to do stuff (while he was awake) and he got used to being in it, and falling asleep in it... but he also used to fall asleep nursing, or being rocked.

what i'm saying is that although your baby is perfectly normal it may be worthwhile just getting her to spend short amounts of time in her crib while she is awake so that she gets to feel safe in it (while you are still in the room)