Great idea Astrid!! I wholeheartedly agree with what Kelly has said too - both myself and Jacob cope much better when there is organisation and consistency when it comes to sleep.

I'm just wondering - is there any reason why you do the wind down in your lounge room? Is it nice and warm etc in there and you're all comfie there? I'm just wondering if perhaps sometimes Maggie might fight the sleep because she plays there during the day etc? This is where a lot of her daily activities take place IYKWIM? Perhaps you could think about relocating to her room - put a CD player in there etc and have the music going and the sleepy books by her cot perhaps? So you could try going straight from the bathroom, into her room and go through all the motions there - getting dressed for bed, sleepy book and music, BF, quiet cuddles with Mum etc and then transfer to the cot??? Sorry, I'm just thinking out loud here and trying to work out why she may get upset sometimes. I also notice that you have your dinner part way through the wind-down for bed routine - is there any way you could have your dinner at the same time as Maggie, i.e. have it together as a family? That would remove that part which may disturb/confuse her perhaps? She may also get a bit stimulated by watching things on the laptop perhaps.........

What to do when she doesn't go to sleep straight away and fights it? I am less stressed if we take a break, but then how do I keep consistency?
If she doesn't go to sleep straight away, perhaps you could try a few different things to see if one of them provides some comfort:

- give her a comfort toy (something she only has at sleep times)
- introduce a sleep message at each sleep time (just an additional sleep 'tool' really - something that she will eventually associate with sleep)
- keep the music going
- turn on a night light for her

Other things you could do to settle her when she's crying is to gently rock or pat her. We found rolling Jacob onto his side and putting one hand on his shoulder and the other on his hip/bottom and alternating rocking/patting really soothed him. Sometimes we'd be doing it for an hour (we'd do it in shifts!) but it soothed him and he relaxed a LOT from that. Don't feel bad if you get stressed from the crying - it happens to all of us and sometimes you need to take a few minutes to yourself so that you can go back in ready to help. The main thing is that you're consistent in your approach to settling, once you've found something that seems to soothe and settle her. Even now at 19 months old, Jacob still enjoys that rocking/patting and is soothed by it if he's upset. I think it's the rhythmical motion of it......

Anyway, sorry if I've rambled on or have caused any offence.......just trying to throw around a few ideas for you!