Would you try CC with 18mo?

[twinklespeciallyforlittlegirls]

DD is a good sleeper (usually 11-12hrs a night, touch wood!) and rarely wakes during the night, if she does a quick cuddle or a drink will normally settle her back down.

We tend to put her to bed by lying her between us and reading her a story, she is normally asleep by the end of it but sometimes she needs to be held tightly for a while before she can drop off (as a baby she had to be swaddled to settle) or sometimes if she's really thrashy-abouty she will settle in cot after a few minutes of flailing.

DC2 is expected next year and we will not be able to do this then! Should we try CC? Have never done it, but I wonder if she is old enough and it'd be okay?

If so what the heck do you do? We did PUPD and gradual withdrawal when she was little but I never looked at CC. The thought of it makes me shudder, I am crap at listening to babies cry, but if it worked fast it'd be okay I suppose, needs must and all that.

I'd welcome any thoughts/advice [hsmile].

ps I know 18m is not really a "baby"!

Sounds a bit extreme to go from a child who's actually quite good at self settling by the sounds of it, just needing the odd prompt, to full on cc without trying the myriad options inbetween.

There's actually no reason why you can't continue to do this even with a dc2 if you wanted to. But at 18 months there are lots of avenues to explore if you want to change things. Even things like sticker charts start to work at that age.

What is it you actually want to achieve? Not sure which bit you're finding a problem.

I've recently had dc2 and dc1's bedtime hasn't changed really. There's just a baby on my chest during it now.

It's more that it takes about half an hour and takes both of us, you have to hold on to her during the story or she's off (very active child)! If you do story downstairs she doesn't seem to switch off. Ideally she would have a story and a cuddle, then it would be into the cot and that'd be it. I suppose we just need to tweak bedtime, was just getting a bit stressed at the thought of coping with 2 children and wondered if we should do this - we get a lot of eyerolling and comments about our sleeping arrangements (coslept til weaned from boob and still sleeps in our room) and bedtime and lots of people mention cc to us so I thought I should at least think about it.

I too cosleep and do so until they're ready to move into their own bed. DD did this happily at 3. I think it would be an enormous and upsetting shock to start cc all of a sudden having coslept and cuddled up to this point. Ignore the eyerolling. There is NOTHING wrong with what you're doing. People the world over practise what you're doing as the norm.

I'd tackle one thing at a time. Does she nap? Could you do daytime napping first and then just transfer it to nightime? I know other people do this quite successfully. I'd tweak towards a new routine. Slowly slowly catchy monkey. I think at 18 months with a child who's only taking half an hour and not feeding to sleep or similar, you could crack it fairly easily.

Does she nap? (hollow laugh) Not really. She is down to about 30 min now, and has only ever napped outside for some reason...she won't sleep for nursery either, though they have tried lots of things. I think routine tweaking is the way. She's not getting booted out of the family bedroom or anything, she will have her own room but if she sleeps better in with everyone else that will continue. She's only little so will fit in her cot for ages yet. I don't really want to do CC, but when she goes to sleep in the day she nearly always cries for about a minute before she drops off, that was what made me think of it.

Have you read The No Cry Sleep Solution? My dd has always been a bad sleeper and still is at 16 months, but we're going to try some of the ideas from the book. She is very against cc but has lots of interesting alternatives that might suit you and lo. Good luck!

Yes, I had it and the No Cry Nap Solution when she was tiny - I charity shopped them after finding myself in tears as she wasn't following what the book said she would!
I think we're just going to see if we can simplify bedtime, or failing that we'll just all have to join in :)