We put our 8mo DD into a bedtime routine of bath, bottle, bed from 6wo and she went (in a week) from being an extremely bad sleeper to going through the night. Since then we've stuck with it and it's worked for us. However over the last couple of months I have been the one putting her to bed more and more as DH has taken on a couple of night shifts and we've become more and more aware that when he put her down it was starting to become hit and miss, therefore we have been lazy and I have been putting her to bed because we know she will be asleep quickly and then we can spend some time together.
I went out a couple of weeks ago before bedtime and it took DH 2 hours to get her to sleep. Then my mum babysat one night and it took her almost as long and she only got her to sleep by rocking her in the buggy, not ideal really. DH has tried for the last week to put her to bed but she's just not having it.
I believe I have therefore become part of her bedtime routine and she won't settle because I am not there (she still settles when I put her down, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep). I am also aware that when babies reach 1yo a lot (not all) of people try to drop the night time bottle. At the moment she needs it to fall asleep but when she turns 1 (or around that time) I'd like to give her a drink of warm normal milk until she doesn't need it anymore. I was thinking that was something she could have downstairs instead of upstairs.
So at the moment I am thinking that we give her her bath, brush teeth, put her PJ's on and then bring her downstairs to have her bedtime bottle and she can watch cbeebies bedtime hour. Then take her upstairs and DH can read her a book, he will then try 'gentle bedtime retreat'. I've spent the last 8 months turning the TV off an hour before bedtime so that it's quite down time, but I just discovered In the Night Garden the other day and it seems to have caused some serious eye rubbing. However I'm not sure how I feel about TV before bed, is this a good or bad idea?
So my questions are 1) is there another way of trying to get DH to put her to bed in our existing routine? 2) is my new routine good/bad 3) is there a better one?