Hi Sparkles,

I had this problem with Miss M from 6 wks old. I read "save our sleep" by tizzi hall, & while i didn't agree with.. well, most of it lol, what i did take from it was being in the room to help settle. I modified it to suit our family & it has worked a treat here.

Basically when she wasn't settling in bed & i was having to keep going in, I put a chair next to her cot and would sit there, making no eye contact or talking to her (ignoring her, but if she dropped her dummy I would put it back in without making eye contact), she would drop off to sleep & I would leave (i just played on my ph or read a mag/book while sitting there). This took about 1 1/2 - 2 weeks before she would go down & fall asleep by herself.

She still has 3 x 2hr naps per day, and 95% of the time I put her down & she goes to sleep without me going back, although she often still wakes after 1 sleep cycle (about 40min) I don't get her up, she may play with her toys & sing out for 15min, but then falls back asleep, I used to get her up after that 1 sleep cycle, but then she was still tired from not enough sleep - and as this went on throughout the day, by the arvo she was grumpy & overtired.

It's much easier now she is older, because she can put her own dummy back in her mouth (she ONLY has dummy at sleep time, or in the car)

But I never once had to let her get to that hysterical cry, cause she was happy if I or DF/DD1 was in her room. The whole exercise also made her feel secure in her room which has been awesome, because she knows its her safe sleep space & when she is put in her cot its sleep time.

I should also add we used "wrap me ups" by love me baby until 4.5 months (when she started rolling) and now we use grobags at nightime & a muslin/or cotton "blankie" during the day, Miss M associates these things with sleeping & i reckon having "things" they associate with sleep, like in our case a dummy & blankie - works no question

HTH

Bec xo