Marcellus, interesting that you mentioned about laughing helping sleep.

Laughter releases various hormones in the brain which aid sleep, the hormone I'm thinking of is... melatonin. (Got there in the end!) We find that DS sleeps a lot better if we do loads of giggles just before his bath. And even during his bath sometimes, we have peek-a-boo with the shower curtain if I'm on the loo and rubber duck fights.

We also have songs. We have one song pre-bath, one for in the bath, another for when he's in his bed and lights off. The song stops him talking, which then means he can wind down (he just doesn't shut up!). The songs help him link in what's about to happen so he's happier. Oddly enough, he had one song (Strauss' Blue Danube... just try singing that!) for day naps but no way would he have that for a night sleep, he would only have the little song I made up for him when he was a tiny baby.

DS was a shocking sleeper at 7-8m old. Really dire. He'd be up almost every hour. I kept everything "night-time" and co-slept, which helped us a bit. His sleeping went downhill at 8w old, 4-5m was awful, 7-8m another bad patch, 11-13m wasn't too great but I think my expectations here were higher.

Now if he's really up and going in the middle of the night it's a one-off (it does end eventually!) so I let him play and he ends up snuggling up with me a couple of hours later and having a lie-in. But there is no way I'd have let him do that as a baby because he's not going to learn he can play in the middle of the night!