Anyone tried pick up/put down alongside co-sleeping?

[ChunkyMonkeyToo]

We've co-slept with DD (7 months) since she was born, and love it. BUT our evenings are terrible, she won't even bf to sleep and has to be rocked by her daddy until she's sound asleep and then passed to me for the rest of the evening. Sometimes we're rocking and feeding and walking up and down with her until past midnight. We've tried gradual retreat and shh-pat to no avail.

We're thinking of trying pick up/put down when she goes down in the evening, then co-sleeping once we come to bed. Has anyone tried this combination with success? Is pick up/put down really just another version of controlled crying? Am in a real dilemma, really need to sort our evenings but DON'T want to leave dd to cry and DO want to carry on co-sleeping. Are we onto a hopeless cause?

How long is she awake before you try putting her down? I used to find that ds1 could last between 2 to 3 hours. I think it is important to catch them at the right point of tiredness.

I can't comment on the pick up/put down method as we ended up doing controlled comforting with ds1 - modified cc - which I'm guessing you wouldn't go for and probably wouldn't work as well for a 7 month old anyway.

She's awake at least 3 hours before we put her down, sometimes she's soooo tired but she can keep going and playing til midnight if we let her! You're right, if we miss the right point it's even harder to get her down. What's controlled comforting? It sounds a bit like pick up/put down?

No - you basically swaddle them and put them on their side facing away from you so no eye contact and then pat their back for 15 minutes at the end of which you pick them up if they are still crying, calm them down and start again. If she is overtired, she is bound to scream when you put her down ime. Much harder to get them off that point. I don't think screaming is necessarily negative - I used to say to dh that I thought ds1 needed to scream before going to sleep to release any built-up tension from the day.

You could try to put her down with a mobile on when she starts screaming. Ds2 has howling fits and I think it is because he needs time out from being handled so trying to comfort him is in fact counter productive.

The only other thing is that she might be at a point where she is starting to have separation anxiety which is another problem altogether!