All babies are different and some settle really quickly and some take longer. I guess the first thing is to try and work out why she's crying - is she just over tired or may she have some reflux, colic, constipation etc. You mentioned that you don't want to get into any bad habits - well i think that they are only bad habits in other peoples eyes - in other words we do what ever we need to do to get by. Also if she's not sleeping you are probably also exhausted and everything is magnified by 100 when we are tired. Does she fall asleep while you are feeding her? If she does can you feed and then pop her into her cot to sleep or does she wake up. You could also try some bubba music CD's to help her drift off to? MCHN although most of the time in my experience offer good advice I found they were VERY much into not rocking your baby to sleep in your arms but get them in their cot and tap/rock them there. Our gorgeous girl always fell asleep after/during drinking her bottle in our arms and then we put her to bed. She is now 2 and a bit and we have no problems with her going to bed. She is more than happy to climb in when we say its bed time without much fuss - so rocking in our arms did no harm there! When she does sleep it is important that you recharge your batteries too. I still have the odd afternoon nap when Mackenzie is down and I don't feel bad about it - everyone knows that the tidying up can wait until tommorrow! I don't have the magical solution for you but I'm sure you will get loads of responses with all different ideas to try. And no your bubba isn't the only one who does this - my friend had a baby who screamed for 12 months - he's now 4 and still dosn't really need a lot of sleep but she survived and now she has twins!