My 8-month-old daughter is fighting sleep. She cries very hard when we put her in her crib, and it is taking us about 2 hours to get her to fall asleep. We have been trying to put her down around 7/7:30, and it is just not working. I have read the book, and most of the advice seems to be for parents of babies who wake up during the night. My daughter wakes only once or twice, and I am fine with that, but I am so frustrated about spending the entire evening trying to help her fall asleep. She just learned to crawl this week and is starting to pull up, so maybe she just wants to practice her new skills, but can anyone suggest a way for me to get her to fall asleep a little easier? I am planning to let her play in her crib in the mornings and on weekends during the day, to make her have good feelings about her crib, but really, she just hates to fall asleep. We pat her back/bottom, sing to her, I lean over her crib and lay my head next to her, and sometimes I can nurse her to sleep. I feel like I've tried everything. Each of these things has worked at one time or another, but nothing has worked every time, and nothing seems to be working now at all. What steps do you think I should follow to get her to fall asleep in a shorter time period?

What do you do for a bedtime routine? There are a lot of tips in the book for getting ready for sleep time. Our son hated going to sleep as well, so we created a soothing bedtime routine based on the ideas in the book that went like this: eat supper 2 hours before bed, then after supper, make sure you have quiet time during these last few hours before bed - stories, quiet games, dim lighting to encourage release of melatonin to induce sleepiness. Then the actual bedtime routine starts: bath, nighttime songs while doing infant massage, pajamas, tooth brushing, nighttime books and nursing, then cuddles until he was COMPLETELY asleep. We didn't put him down in the crib because he wanted to be cuddled to sleep. This is right in line with the book where you don't actually start with putting baby down in the crib awake if they don't like it.... start with what they would like... perhaps rocking, cuddling, lying next to them... whatever. Babies like their mommies close by. Start with what baby wants, and then bit by bit over several weeks you can move into the direction you want to go with it. We, for example, have stayed at the level of lying down next to our son as he falls asleep and he is almost 5. It only takes a couple of minutes at this point because the sleep routine WORKS now on an almost subliminal level... we've been doing it for so long that it actually MAKES him tired to go through all the steps. As for lying next to him, we really enjoy this special time with him that we still get to have as he gets older... it's our time of night to reconnect with this little guy who doesn't tell us what he did at school, and doesn't "need" us a lot of the time for cuddles or closeness, so we really enjoy that he still loves this cuddly time with us! So we've never gotten past that because we really enjoy it - which is in the book too... she says nothing is wrong or a bad idea if everyone in the family is happy with the arrangement, and we are so here we stay with our cuddles!

Like I said, just start with what baby wants for falling asleep and slowly move away from it over time...

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Lurking from * Born in June 2007 * my baby is 7 months old and he doesn't sleep either ! wakes up at night several times .. can hardly have a nap during the day !

so you do recommend buying the book ? is it really helpful ?

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