Transfer from bed to cot

[Vera77]

Hi
I am looking for some advice on how to transfer my 9month old girl from our bed to her own cot. She has always slept with us but I would like to transfer her to her cot. I have made one or two attempts at this but she just gets hysterical. She needs me lying beside her to go asleep and I can't leave her til she is fast asleep. I really don't think I have the heart for controlled crying, I am not against CC but just don't think I could leave her cry. So any other options or advice would be really appreciated.

Have you tried putting a sheet from your bed on her cot mattress and a pajamas top you have worn for her to snuggled. Is the cot mattress a good one? They may not transfer well from lovely bed mattress to sponge mattress for instance. Just some thoughts. Some people have success with pick up put down rather than cc.

I've just got my four-month-old into his cot at night after co-sleeping pretty much from birth. I was really lucky in that he had learnt (completely off his own back) to fall asleep from drowsy on his own for naps, so I just started doing the same at night. But it might be that some of the things we do work for you?

What works for us is a bedtime routine (bath, story etc), then white noise, final feed to drowsy, winding, down in cot with eyes still open and then hand on chest until eyes are closed. On the road to this though, we started with lots of jigging/rocking after the winding to get him really drowsy, and then bending down right over him until his eyes closed and he slept. Gradually we've been able to stop those two steps. Hopefully we can cut out the hand on chest and even staying in the room soon too. He does still cry in a whingy kind of way though.

Putting him down with his eyes open does seem to be the crucial thing. He doesn't like it, but it does mean he stays down for longer as he doesn't get panicked when he awakes again briefly.