Cot in the evening and cosleeping overnight - possible?

[Turry]

Is it? If so please tell me how! DD is lovely over night, so we actually quite like having her in with us, but how do we get her to accept the cot for the first few hours of the night when we're downstairs? She goes down ok, but seems to notice we're not there so is always really unsettled.

I only feed her a couple ofttimes between 11 and 7am, yet if I leave her between 7pm and 11 she can end up wanting to be fed four or five times in that time. Surely there must be another way?

That is exactly what we did with both babies! Put them in their cot (although DS needed feeding to sleep for a long time) and as soon as they woke up they came in with us. Just couldn't be bothered with trying to resettle them in the cot in the middle of the night.

It was best of both worlds for us as it meant we got some sort of evening to ourselves, and then got more sleep at night (DS would feed on and off without even waking me) - plus I really enjoyed the sleepy cuddles, it is such a special time. :)

oh and WRT settling them in the cot, it was a dummy with DD (until 6 months) and feeding to sleep with DS

We often do this. Not particularly by choice, she's just really unsettled in cot after first feed. I feed her in her room, nice & dark & quiet. Then rock her to sleep, usually with White noise on (ocean sounds). We settle dd1 after she's asleep & it helps mask noise! Then put her down. To be fair she does sometimes stir but re-settles quickly without a feed. Maybe White noise could help? I also put her down with Muslim at every nap & nightime. Maybe try using something that smells of you for her to keep close by?

I actually put her down with a muslin. Oops!

We did the long haul sleep training. It took 6 to 8 weeks but involved sitting with our twins in a dark room, settling, settling, settling but trying to make everything as boring and unstimulating as possible while letting them know we were still in the room. Sitting with the mobile or laptop helped our sanity! Gradually over that time, the amount of time we had to sit with them reduced until we could just leave them to settle by themselves. Now we have a twinkly light which we leave on and they potter in their cots until they sleep. One twin we don't hear from until morning, the other cries to come in with us any time from midnight onwards so we still get the snuggles.

If your DD is waking frequently because she is used to having you close by, you could try wrapping a cuddly toy in one of your tshirts. I do this with my DS and he always snuggles into it. I think the cot can seem an empty place when your used to cuddles from mummy and daddy.

We do this with DD2, although she is only just getting the hang of it at 20 months. How old is your baby, OP?