Thanks Marti. Yes, I think that sounds right. Thanks for getting so clued into my lo's limits in terms of number of hours of sleep needed from a distance! I'll try for that one nap and 13 hr day in all.
And Heidi, when she goes down for a nap, I literally walk in the room with her, check briefly for soiled nappy, put the soother in while I'm still holding her by the cot and say, 'Have a lovely nap, Mummy be here when you wake up' and I put her down, give her a muslin and cover her and walk out of the room. Ten minutes after she's been totally still, I creep in and cover her with another blanket as she is always uncovered as she's thrown the cover off while trying to settle herself.
When I put her to bed at night, after she's had the bottle, she's usually awake and sits on my lap for 10 minutes while the milk goes down a bit. (Personally, I don't like the idea of putting her straight down after the bottle as she's bound to feel full up and the last thing I want to do after a meal is lay down straightaway!) While she is sitting there, at first I put the soother in, rub her back to burp her and then once she's burped, I stop rubbing and turn the light off and we sit quietly in the dark. She usually just sits there nice and calm and sucks the soother. Then she makes a sign that she wants to go up on my shoulder and I put her up there and stand up and walk to the cot. I then stand for a few moments to let her know that this is the moment I put her down for the night, and just lay her down and walk out of the room. She usually settles straightaway. The only difference to the above is if she is super tired from a bad day's napping, then she sometimes falls asleep on the soother while sitting on my lap in that 10 minutes upright time. I can't help this. I just put her down the same way after sitting with her for the usual amount of time to let her milk go down a bit. The only thing that sometimes happens is that if she falls asleep on my lap in that upright time, the soother sometimes falls out and she's so asleep that she doesn't cry out for it. So I just leave it on the side and wait for that dreaded moment sometime in the night when she'll wake and want it...
Hope that gives you a good picture of what goes on at naps and bedtime?
I have started to give her practice time trying to find the soother. I am just letting her have the soother then saying 'pop!' (which is the word I usually say when I'm about to take the soother out of her mouth when I pick her up after her naps or in the morning when she wakes). Then after I've said 'pop' and taken the soother out, I've been putting the soother on the floor near her head as if she's in the cot, making sure that she sees I've put it somewhere. Then she rolls over and gets it. Is that how to train her?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. She had her 1 year old immunisations today so tonight may be disturbed...
By the way Marti and Heidi, last night she had me up 4 times...I put the soother to her hand each time and she seemed to go off, but not sure if she was waking for that or for some other reason and just found that she didn't have the soother at those times and she then wanted it..?!
Today she napped for only an hour from 11.30am as the two year old disturbed her lots...So I gave her a 6.30pm start to the BT routine. She was super tired and so it was one of those nights where she fell asleep on my lap...By the way, I've also bought a glow in the dark soother but given that she might wake tonight with sore legs from her immunisations, I've decided not to use it yet - I thought I want to make sure I've ruled one reason out about why she might wake instead of wondering whether she's woken because she doesn't like her new soother! I'll start using it in a couple of days.
