Help please! Trouble settling down at night.

[poshsinglemum]

We have a flexible routine.
I give dd a bath at 6ish. Take her into her darkened nursery. Feed her, sing lullaby and or/tell her strory. Let her mill around a bit till drousy.

On a good day she'll feed to sleep. Bad I know and a habit I am trying to break.

On a bad day, especially in this weather I'll be in the nursery for two hours or so and she will not setrtle. She just keeps palying. I get bored and take her downstairs.
I have tried controlled crying and I hate it aas she vomited and we both got upset.
Is controlled crying my only option? I am reading the no-cry sleep solution.

DD is one and breastfed. I am also hoping to get her off the boob.
I am camping on her nursery floor with her in cot in order to wean her off cosleeping.

I am beginning to think i have made a rod thing and those mums who did cc at three months and now their kids are sleeping through for twelve hours have a point. But cc just seems so heartless.

I am alos very confused about my parenting styles. I hav edone cosleeping as I believe in attachment parenting to a certain degree but I also find myself needing space.

Also- when she did fall asleep on a good day she still wakes for evening breast feeds then I took her into my own bed at night as I did love the cosleeping experience.

sorry bout spelling- exhausted.

In your situation I had to make the decision that I had to focus on everyone getting the most sleep. Working full-time doesn't give you much opportunity to spend nights awake trying to force a toddler to make a change they're not ready for.

My DS is now coming up on 2.5 yrs in August, still feeding first in the morning, before bed (lately feeding to sleep again!) and once over night. He sleeps in his own room (cuddled to sleep on a big boy bed) until he wakes up to have a wee, then comes in with us, usually around midnight. If he has his wee earlier (say 11pm) and goes back off in his bed he always wakes an hour later. Having him go off in his own room did make a huge difference, though. Unfortunately it has taken until the past month or two for him to become a heavier sleeper and to mostly reliably drop to one night waking.

With my dd2 I found bringing her downstairs after I tried the bedtime thing just confused the whole issue.

I started keeping her up later, til she was really tired, then doing the routine.

Once she got the hang of drifting of in her own cot, I brought the bedtime forward.

She is 16months and goes down at 7 at the latest now without a problem.

I'd go back to later nights though if I thought it'd stop the early waking!

Meant to say, I did cc with dd1 and it worked brilliantly but couldn't with dd2 as it would have woken dd1 too.