Crying before sleep

[lunatick]

I imagine the answer is here somewhere but with 292 pages of posts to sift through I thought I might ask the question.

Why does my daughter cry everytime before she goes to sleep?

Varying lengths of crying time and generally the length increases toward the end of the day. She is breastfed but we are currently undergoing a gradual shift to the bottle in prep for going back to work. She sleeps in our room, in her own bed. She is just under 5 months old.

Any help will be hugely appreciated. We're all a bit tired here.

dd2 has always had a cry before sleep. when she was little it was usually full on screaming. I'd mostly hold her through it, but then she would sometimes have another little cry after being put down.

now she is 7mo, and the crying seems to have toned down to a weirdy moaning for 5-10minutes before sleep. she is in her own room now so it's less of an issue for us. sorry i can't be more help!

How many naps is she having? What is the timing between last nap and bedtime? My DD used to do this and then I realised that the problem was she was over tired and this got progressively worse during the day. When she was overtired she just found it so much more difficult to go to sleep and she is still the same at 2.4.
At this age I think she could manage maybe a couple of hours between naps. When she dropped her late afternoon nap I made sure she was in bed for 6pm. This ensured she wasn't overtired and wouldn't cry.

Good luck, but remember most things are a phase and they do grow out of them!

Naps are at 0830 until 0930, 1200 to 1400 and 1600 to 1700 with bedtime at 1900-1930. We start the bedtime ritual at 1830 (bath, dim lights, sing, massage, hugs). Our settling method is to hold her in the cot - not pick her up as we're trying to progress away from this.

Maybe overtiredness is the answer but she just doesn't seem to exhibit the signs of being tired at all, until perhaps it is too late? She is a very active baby - lots of noise generally (which is very cool) and lots of smiles (even cooler) but not at bedtime!