stop crib crawlling strategy

[cotrocol]

Hello everyone,
My 8 mo DD has always needed me to go to sleep, for the past few months "only" to get her in the "right" position (she kept rolling and I'd stop her or put her to back position - otherwise she'd start playing on belly- until she'd eventually start playing with her blankie, fixate a spot and fall asleep). That was independent enough for me, although not as good as described in books... She started crawling two weeks ago and she's very hard to hold in place or to "convince" to go down, stay still and fall asleep. I read many advices on this issue, some say put her down just once and walk away (until when?), some say put her down for a certain number of minutes and then walk away. I actually need to make her an independent sleeper, since I'll have to go back to work in a month and I'd feel better knowing that she went through the pain with me than with the babysitter (BTW, would a babysitter even try to do all this repetitive putting down?). If anybody went on this road and found a solution, PLEASE share it..! Just a thought: lengthening the wind down (now is about 30 min) would make her less active? Thank you for any suggestion.

PS: I want to thank everyone that makes this website possible. I don't know how it's organized and run, but it's been a blessing for me and my family, we supported it monetarily, congratulations. (It's my first time to post anything here..., but I converted Andrea from falling asleep in my arms while being rocked, to sleep semi-independently in the crib using PU/PD advise from this site!)

[cotrocol]

Thank you Stacy, I wish I could have been online yesterday, when you replied... I hope you can still read this.
I've been doing just what you suggested for few days now but the result is that she gets way too excited to fall asleep(she keeps trying to stand up using the rails and crawls all over the bed for over an hour...). Every 5-10 min I'd go in and try to calm her and lay her down, but no success, after few seconds of silence she's back up. Finally I've been rocking her a bit, until she calms down, which happens very fast (I know she's tired but she can't stop herself), then lay her in bed drowsy. She falls asleep within minutes. Is this temporary, should I continue to do what I'm doing until it passes? Thank you again.

[cotrocol]

The "routine" usually depends on when she wakes up.
6:10-6:50 wake up
7:00-7:40 start breakfast
     play
8:30-8:50 walk
8:50-9:00 bottle (formula)
9:00-~10:00 struggle to falls asleep
     45 min nap (this is another problem...)
11:30 lunch
     play
1:00-1:20 walk
1:20-1:30 bottle (formula)
1:30-~2:15 try to sleep
      45 min nap
      I try to put her back to sleep, most of the time I end up using the stroller (if I let her have only two short naps she's a mess by bedtime...)
4:00-4:30 dinner
6:00-6:20 walk
6:20-6:40 bath
then bottle, bed (falls asleep fairly easy, after only few rounds of laying down/ sitting up, usually by 7:30pm)

[cotrocol]

Wow! This is really helpful. I never thought about the fact the she might be using her napping "craving" during bottle feeding, but now that I think about it I realize she almost falls asleep...I just thought that would be a good  thing, to make her ready for bed, but I guess that must have backfired all this time...We started giving her bottle right before sleep to mimic what happens at night because we were having much bigger problems with the naps before, and it worked for a while, until she started crawling...
Another Q if you don't mind: would you recommend giving bottle between solid meals? (I noticed she ends up not being hungry for either...)

[evanskimberley]

In answer to you PM I was doing as Satcey suggested and leaving her to it. if she got upset then I would go back in but otherwise leave her.  I found that by going in to her all the time I was hyping her up again and it was a bit of a game.
you mentioned that whe you rocked her for a bit then put her down drowsy she went right off, so how about changing wind down slightly to incorporate this. You don't want to be rocking really cos you can't do that forever as she'll be getting bigger, but how about sitting with her on your lap, with some music on, youcould sway gently, then put her down. It sounds like she really needs a proper calm down before she'll go off.
Kxx

[cotrocol]

Thank you very much for suggestions, ladies. I'm so grateful that this site exists and you are kind enough to answer. I tried reading both Tracy's book and many posts here, but I'm obviously a novice (I had no idea the naps and night sleep are controlled by different parts of the brain!)
It does seem that leaving her alone to get the crawling out of her system works better:)
Stacy, how long would Kaleb be active in the crib before going down? (my worry is that left completely alone, Andrea would play for hours and never nap!, she's very, very active in general...)
Kimberley, I'll try your suggestion with swinging on the rocking chair as part of wind down. Do you think that the walk before nap confuses her? (since sometimes I put her to nap in another stroller) - as Stacy suggested, things might take away the full sleep potential at nap time.
Thank you again