14 month old cried when we put him in cot for naps and at bedtime

[curlyblonde]

Our 14 month old DS screams when he is put in his cot. His bedtime routine is bath, story, breastfeed, cot. He starts crying as soon as he's put down and screams for anything from 5 min to 30 min. I go in every 4 min or so to give him a cuddle and he stops immediately but starts again as soon as I put him down again. I've tried sitting in the room with him but then he thinks it's playtime and sits up in his cot babbling to me. I've never been able to rock him to sleep in my arms and transfer him without waking him and triggering the screaming so that doesn't work either. The same thing happens at nap time. He's just dropped a nap but that hasn't made it better or worse. Dealing with so much crying from an otherwise happy baby is having a detrimental impact on my mental health and it must be awful for him too. I have no idea what to do.

Dd was exactly like this! I’ll tell you what I did to solve it and hopefully it works for you.

I did usual bedtime routine, put her in her cot and then laid down next to the cot with a pillow and blanket and pretended to sleep. Dd would first think it was a fun game, then get annoyed I wasn’t responding (I was right there ‘sleeping’ so it was just annoyance) to screaming. After about 5ish mins she realised that it was ok because mummy was there, but shrieking wasn’t go to do anything, and she laid down and went to sleep.

I did this for all naps and bedtime for about 3 days, and then it was like k had a different baby. She just went straight down every night.

With dd the going back into resettle meant she knew if she yelled I’d go in and I really wanted to break that habit, unless it was for a proper reason - and you can always tell the difference in cry when they really need you.

Good luck!