putting a 13-month old to bed

[Evita]

Since she was about 3 months old I've put my daughter to bed in a totally dark room in her cot. There's a bedtime routine: daytime we look at a book and say goodbye to things in the lounge and I carry her to her room and put her down. In the evening she has a bath, pajamas, breast feed and then I carry her to her room. I was wondering though when it's time to start having a bit more light in her room and doing something like reading her a story while she's in bed. How do other people with 1 year old-ish babies put them down?

evita - glad that you posted....my ds is 16 months and i have been trying to d the sorts of things that you have suggested for the last week....read books in bed etc etc
but once he is in his cot, he just turns onto his tummy, put his knees under his body, hands on his tummy, bum in the air and just wants to sleep....
i know what you mean though - really would like to snuggle down together and do stories in bed...
plenty time though i guess

Yeah, maybe 13 months is too early. I can't imagine my daughter particularly taking to it just yet. I still have to do a bit of a drop and run thing so she doesn't make a fuss about going to bed. But what about light?

we have a dimmer switch which we sometiomes put on low, or we turn of the light and open his door slightly with the landing light on....

Oh Evita,
If I were you I would be so grateful that she goes down so well, with no fuss, that I definately wouldn't do anything to rock the boat. Not at such a young age. If she gets the idea that mum will stay and read her stories she will milk it, and you will wish you had never started it.
You have done so well to get the routine you've got, don't take it for granted!!

Between 1 and 2 I started reading to dd before going to bed. Probably around 18 mths... but didn't do it in her room... she was still in cot so not really practical. Also she would drink a cup of milk at the same time. I always put her to sleep in dark room and she was happy with that until around 2 and half, when she suddenly started telling us to leave the door open a crack. She likes to be able to "see". We need to leave the hall light on too otherwise when she turns over in the night she cries out. I'd leave the light thing until your dd shows signs of wanting it on. And if you are still doing a b/f before bed, then I'd leave the stories for now too.

With both our children (3 and 1) we have pretty much the same routines: bath, milk (beaker or boob, according to age) in the bedroom, then a story sitting up (to let the burp come up), then into sleeping bag and bed. Sometimes the sleeping bag comes earlier in the routine. There is a sofabed in ds's room, so we sit on that, but dd is still in our room () so we sit on our bed for her story. At 3yo ds still likes looking at the pictures, so I don't imagine we'll be reading to him in bed until we get to the stage of reading books without pictures.

Thanks everyone. I guess I have this vaguely romantic idea of my sitting reading to her while she lies in bed all tucked up and dozing off as I watch her. But she's too small yet for that. And norma, I am truly grateful she goes down without too much fuss. It's been a bit of a slog to get there I might add! We suffered terrible bouts of screaming and tears which shattered our nerves, but now she seems to have accepted bed time. Shouldn't say that, should I? Tomorrow she'll probably scream the house down. Little telepath.