8 month old erratic sleeper... Help!

[Ruthie22]

My 8 month old seems to have no consistency with her sleeping patterns. Her naps vary day-to-day and her sleeping at night is the same.
On top of this, she has been ill/teething etc recently so she has been sleeping with us.
Now she refuses to sleep in her cot, waking as soon as we try to put her in or if we do so when she is awake she will cry and scream.
At the moment I am having to practically get in the cot with her to make her settle, but I can't see how I will ever be able to withdraw myself from the situation so she will fall asleep on her own.
I feel like I have completely messed things up sigh
Any help would be great!

Poor you Ruthie you must be very tired. I have a 9 month old (DS2) who took a very long time to get a more established sleeping pattern. There are lots of threads on here about gradual withdrawal and controlled crying - it really depends what you can stomach and what you feel is right for your DD. Being consistent with bedtime and naptime routines and controlled crying techniques worked very quickly for us when DS2 had reached 7 months but there will be many others who will say it wasn't right for them or feel unhappy about leaving a baby to cry. I think a lot of babies are hard to settle when they are teething - if that's any consolation!

Hey Pluto, thanks for replying!
Can't stomach the controlled crying technique as she goes absolutely crazy but am trying to be consistent with routine etc. I think she is suffering a little from separation anxiety as when she wakes up she cries until she sees I am there. Good news is her two top teeth have come through the gums now so we can really start to work on getting her in bed and settled!

Hi ruthie, we are in the same boat with our 7mth old. she has always been rubbish at sleeping but fairly happy with it. Until recently we had fairly good nights (I think she was so exhausted by not sleeping in the day0 but not so anymore and it takes hours to settle her at night. I was reading the sears website and it was saying to just go with the flow and try a variety of methods to help baby sleep so that they didn't associate just one thing with sleeping and also that their was a difference between crying it out and crying with a loving adult with you. so tonight I did the bedtime routine starting at 6 of bath, jammas, sleeping bag, brush teeth, stories and nice warm feed and put her to bed. I stayed and hush patted, then cuddled, then fed, then hush patted, then cuddled, then fed etc just calmly repeating it is bedtime now, I'll stay with you but it is time for sleep. She has gone down at 8.30 which is almost 4 hours earlier than we have achieved of late.

Ruthie - I would sort out the daytime sleep pattern first. You don't necessarily have to make him cry to do it.

How often does he feed/eat? Every 4 hours? Say he wakes up at 6. Normally, he would be sleeping for an hour in the morning, so expect him to sleep between 9-10, since he will then feed/eat at 10.

To establish this time as sleep time, either put him down in his cot at the same time every day (say, 9:50) or, if you don't want him to cry the first few days, take him out for a stroll in the pram or a ride in the car at this time.

Once this time is established, do the same for afternoon sleep, thinking he will sleep about 1.5-2 hours. So, assuming he feeds at 10, put him down (or take him for a walk/ride) after his next feed at 2.