how do I get DD to self settle?

[whewjuice]

DD is nearly 8 months and can be a nightmare when it comes to sleep. I know she's overtired but she just hates sleeping in the day. She will sometimes fall asleep in her pram after some whining but wakes as soon as we're home. The only way to get her to sleep otherwise is rocking in arms but she puts up a fight and cries even if we try doing it the same time everyday. I couldn't do controlled crying and everytime I've got her sleepy then put her down hoping she would self settle she just lays there babbling and playing for abit then cries for me. I'd just like her to settle easy and stay asleep, having to rock her at 4 in the morning just for and extra hours sleep is killing us. I don't think it's sleep regression as she's always been like this. Sorry for rambling on

Our DD has always been like this too. She's a bit better now, but still resists sleep. She is 2.3. It did help when she decided to start dropping daytime naps (unless she's ill or has slept very badly), she started dropping them at 12-14 months ish.

By which I mean she often didn't nap during the day, from 12 - 14 months. There was no way we could get her to & if she did, it meant she wouldn't sleep at night.

I'd say you need to tackle the over-tiredness in order for her to be able to learn to self-settle. If she's wired and over-tired she's going to really struggle to fall asleep on her own.

Start with naps - do whatever it takes to get her to take a couple of decent daytime naps. A schedule that worked for us at that age was 2-3-4 hr gaps between sleeps (e.g. up at 7, nap at 9, awake at 10, nap at 1, awake at 3, bed at 7). So, if you have to rock her to sleep and then let her nap on you do that until she's consistently taking decent length naps. Or just keep pushing the pram for an hour (good exercise and at least it's summer!) Then you can work on manoeuvring her out of your arms and into the cot / staying asleep once the pram stops moving.

Once daytime naps are better you can start working on nighttime sleep and self-settling, which will hopefully improve anyway once she's better rested in the day (sleep begets sleep for babies!)

That's the trouble I try to get her to nap in the day as much as possible but the most she has is half an hour in the morning and maybe up to an hour in the afternoon which is the maximum and she's still tired after but she won't stay asleep any longer then that