20wk sleep nightmare

[TeacherMummy89]

My baby is almost 20 weeks. She goes to sleep at 7pm like clockwork, no bother, settled nicely in her cot after her bath and bottle. But that's where the bliss ends. She will NOT go back down after a night feed. She wakes, cries, feeds, falls asleep but then the second I lay her on her back she screams. She settles pretty much instantly when I pick her up. I've tried the wake to sleep idea but most times it's really hard to get her to actually wake, she just cries with her eyes shut. Help!

Are you feeding to sleep and then putting her down having already fallen asleep in your arms?

At this age it might be worth thinking of ways to teach her (gradually) to go from fully awake to asleep all done in the cot.

Yeah she tends to fall asleep during her bottle. If I can wake her she will sometimes go down in the cot but even that was a struggle last night as she was really difficult to wake up - she got herself in a right state crying when we tried to properly wake her.

How about separating feeding and sleeping completely? Then teaching a way to go to sleep in the cot.

For example at bedtime do the milk feed downstairs, before bath time and night clothes. During the day you could do the feed when baby first wakes from a nap, instead of when going to sleep.

A dummy will probably help. But the bottom line is that baby will sooner or later need to learn to fall asleep in the cot, like from being fully awake, rather than being moved once already asleep.