How to get 10mo to self settle at bedtime

[SamanthaVimes]

DS is 10 months and bedtime is getting difficult. He won’t feed to sleep anymore but is too heavy for me to rock him.

What ends up happening is I feed him, cuddle him for a bit, he gets massively wriggly so I put him in his cot. He screams the moment he’s put down in it (putting him on the floor he doesn’t mind but that makes him think it’s play time), I try to calm him but end up picking him back up fairly quickly. This gets repeated a few times with him getting upset until he’ll stay still enough that I can cuddle him on the chair and then I transfer him when he’s asleep.

what I’d really like to be able to do is feed him, give him a little cuddle and pop him in his cot awake to go to sleep and leave. Is that completely unrealistic? Is there anything I can do to encourage him to not hate the cot? He hates it in the day too if that’s relevant, he naps in the pushchair.

I’m not looking for him to sleep through the night or anything, I’d just love to gain back some time in the evening before I go to bed!

DH just rocks him to sleep on his nights but he’s got stronger arms than me

Do you have him spend happy, relaxed awake time playing in the cot so it's a recognised safe place? Does he have a comforter that smells of you?

Otherwise, we had to push through the screaming for a couple of nights, with progressively less of it very quickly, until he was able to go to sleep himself. It took less than a week for the screaming to stop and each nap & bedtime it reduced in duration and intensity from night 1. He now does reliably go to sleep himself, usually quietly after a few minutes playing with his comforter.

Check out Lucy Wolfe's stay and support sleep training method. She's on Instagram & has a very, very useful book.

He does have a little bunny comforter that I let him hold whilst I feed him but he’s not really that interested in it if I’m honest, it just reduces how much he grabs at me!

I’ll have a look at Lucy Wolfe, thanks for the recommendation

I thought that for ages about the comforter but it's such an important tool now that we've 2 on rotation so I can wash them. But not all kids take to them!