Hi girls. I thought I would give an update on our sleeping.

It is SOOOOO much better this week! I had to make some pretty dramatic alterations to the way I was doing things, but with gentle persistance and a step by step approach, DD is now self settling and only waking once in the night (after 8.5 hours). Her naps have also improved to at least an hour...

So....this is what I did.

Step 1: STOP feeding to sleep! I swapped feeds to the start of her cycle (yes, a feed, play then sleep routine). I instead rocked her to sleep or used the sling. This took only a few days for her to get the idea that feeding and sleep don't go together. I also had to wake her up as she was feeding (I suspect DD used to often fall asleep before she was finished, because now she takes both sides at more feeds).

Step 2: Experiment with ways of soothing DD in her cot. Now this one was HARD. Of course we are all about gentle parenting, and no-cry solutions, so this took some patience and a lot of picking her up and trying something new. I tried patting, rocking the whole frame of the cot, but found holding her hands and placing my cheek to hers and speaking lovingly into her ear, she stopped crying instantly. I had to do this over quite a few days so she was only crying for a short spurts as I tried to find out our no-cry solution to settling in the cot.

Step 3: Put DD to sleep in the cot ALL THE TIME. I had to stay home for a few days and stop using the sling etc.

Step 4: Put DD to sleep in the cot when she shows tired signs. When she cries comfort her, but stop BEFORE she falls asleep. So its a real start-stop approach. Start comforting when she cries and stop when she stops. This took persistance but it means DD learnt that she was ok, I was ALWAYS there and she could fall asleep on her own.

Step 5: know the difference between whinging and crying and try and ignore the whinging. Now most people would complain if there were put to bed without any say in it, and my DD does whinge a little sometimes, but its like a grizzle and stops after about 10 seconds or so, and might start again. Its like a gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. I call it her sleep story, but I am hovering like a hawk until she falls alseep to make sure I am right there as soon as she cries.

Soo...that's it. It felt a little bit harder on her than I ever thought I would be. But she never cried for more than 20 seconds during this process and was ALWAYS comforted, and the results have been phenomenal. Last night she went to bed with eyes wide open and was asleep within 5 minutes without a peep. That is SUCH an improvement on 40 minutes of settling.

It has also improved our experience of the car and the pram. She no longer screams at me when she is tired and can nod off on her own.
I hope this is helpful to others, because it has transformed my life!!!