argh! putting 4.5 month old to bed

[NomNomDePlum]

how?
she is ebf, and normally feeds to sleep, but it is increasingly difficult to transfer her from lap to cot, it's taking hours to put her down in the evenings, and i have a 3 year old and work to do....
any advice?

Hi Nom, exactly the same issue here with my almost 5 month old DD2. I started on Monday night doing my own version of Pick Up Put Down. Basically I feed her on the bed, till she is going to sleep, then lift her up, burp her (maybe not necessary in your case but my DD2 is a puker so need to get excess out!) then put in cot and say "time for bed" and walk away. Of course she starts crying straight away so I pick her up and cuddle, rock, and sing to her, then put her back in cot and leave again. Basically repeat until she goes to sleep. On Monday it took an hour, last night it took 20 minutes. Tonight, for various reasons I gave up after an hour, but will do again tomorrow. I like it because it doesn't really involve crying because as soon as she starts I can pick her up and comfort her. In the "official" version you are supposed to lay them down as soon as they are quiet but I kept cuddling until she was very sleepy. Also when I put her in cot, if I thought she was possibly going to go to sleep I put one hand on the top of her head and the other, sort of under her and bounced the cot mattress and shushed her, which seemed to get her to sleep. As I say, tonight hasn't gone so well, but if I had persevered am sure she'd have gone to sleep. I did the same thing with DD1, and once she had got used to it I could go back to feeding to sleep then popping in cot and she would stir, roll over, and go off to sleep.

Might be worth a go, these endless evenings trying to settle them are a bit soul destroying eh???