Hello and apologies in advance for this long post!
My DD is 7.5 months corrected age (actual age 10.5 months as she was born at 28 weeks gestation) and she has always been very difficult to put to sleep. She needs to be rocked and walked around with to fall asleep which I don't mind but she puts up a real fight! Kicking, screaming and pushing against me and DH. Once she is asleep in our arms we have to hold her for 20 mins or so before placing her in the cot or our bed if that doesn't work. As she was such a preemie baby she had bad reflux which lasted for the first few months (stopped around 4 months corrected age) so we had to feed her milk, after which she would fall asleep and then we would hold her upright for 20-30 mins. Not sure if she is just used to being held now before sleeping even though we don't give her milk before sleep anymore. She is also now beginning to crawl which may be impacting her interest in sleeping but daytime naps are the hardest.
I really don't mind holding her and rocking her to sleep as she had a hard start to life and I just want to be as close to her as possible to give her the comfort she needs (NICU mum guilt kicks in all the time and I have found sleep training extremely hard and failed at implementing various methods so i have decided to embrace rocking her to sleep) but I feel so helpless when settling her for a nap/sleep consists of such a battle and I wonder why she is not soothed by us! Any advice or reassurance that this is "normal" would be much appreciated! Thanks.