Help with 13mth old bedtime routine please

[glendatheveryexcitedwitch]

Hi
My 13 mth old daughter has always been a pretty good sleeper - going down when we go to bed and not waking until the morning (teething and colds being the exception) she is on cows milk with occasional bf last thing at night our routine at the moment is just takin her up to bed with us with a bottle of warm milk, she lies on the bed and either finished milk and sleeps or finishes milk has bf then sleeps and I transfer her to her cot in the next room.

I have tried bringing her bedtime forward to 8-8.30 ish doing the exact same routine as above but she wakes up after 20 minutes and then is a bugger to get back down when we go to bed.

I want to get her to go to bed awake and to have her milk in her cot and to then self settle. I'm off uni and placement for 4 weeks so want to tackle it now while I'm at home every night.

Any tips, advice, ideas or theories on how to get her bedtime routine sorted would be most appreciated!!!!

My DD is also 13 months. She has a bath at 6, milk in her cup at 6.15 and then watches 'In The Night Garden' and/or reads some books with me or her dad. We then clean her teeth and put her in her cot awake to settle herself. This can take anything from 30 seconds to 20 minutes and involves various amounts of talking to herself, chatting away and tired little moaning noises! Unless she cries in any sort of serious way, or we know she is ill, we don't go back into her room. We have been doing this for a long time though, so she is used to it.

When does your DD nap? If you make sure she's awake from her last nap by 3ish, she should be quite tired by 7ish and you could start your routine about this time. I guess your biggest problem is that she doesn't self-settle. Try keeping her awake a little bit after her bedtime milk, and putting her in her cot awake. She is likely to cry when you leave as she's not used to this, but if I was doing this I would leave her for 3 or 4 minutes, then go back and comfort her till she's calm and then walk back out. Repeat as many times as you need to until she's asleep!

Thanks for the reply - between me and the childminder we've agreed no naps after 4pm.

I have noticed the last week or two when I'm transferring her to the cot she does open her eyes and looks to see where we're going and once in her cot she rolls over so I'm hoping this can be increased to self settling.

I know it can take a few weeks to change her routine hence me doing it now with a whole 4 weeks off.

Does your little one go down for both you and dh?? Unless I've been on night shifts I'm the one putting her to bed but with this new routine I want it to work no matter who puts her to bed.

Yes she goes down fine for either of us, but again this is simply what she is used to. DH is almost always at home for her bedtime, so even if he's not the one doing bath/story/bed he is always present and will join in for some of it. Often this is the point in the day which I hand her over!

Definitely make sure your DH is involved with your new routine so you don't always have to be there. Good luck.

Last night was day 2 of bedtime routine and she went down perfectly at 8.15 however, she then woke up 3 times during the night - first 2 times I cuddled her and put her down after 10 mins but the last time at 4am she would not go back in her cot and ended up in bed with us - can't let her cry it out as she's in with her 8 yr old sister who needs her sleep