[Daffodil]

So it now takes my daughter a LONG time before falling asleep at night. She loves to play instead. And she is so funny that I spend half the time cracking up and playing with her as well. So I don't really mind, I kinda feel like its great bondning time, especially since I'm lying down so I'm resting lol.

But like I said, the time between putting her down for bed and by the time she goes to sleep is now averaging about an hour. Her schedule is so messed up though every single day its something new. But I can't get her to go to sleep if she's tired and if she's super duper tired and fussy I can't keep her awake. I don't know WHY every day its something new...I really try to put her down at the same time but its a crapshoot if she falls asleep or not.

Anyway, like I said, she will just play for a very long time and I don't think I'm putting her to bed too early, because she is rubbing her eyes and yawning...but its like as soon as we lay down, she gets a surge of energy.

My question for parents of crib-sleepers is, when you put your baby down, do they go to sleep right away? Or do they just play by themselves for awhile and eventually fall asleep?

I'm wondering if *I* am causing her to get excited because she's now used to playing at that point.

[Hollybear]

Sophie usually sits up after I lay her down and then by the time I can grab the video monitor to see what she's doing, she'll be laying down. There have been a few times where I'll see her doing something else, like playing with her seahorse.

Sean sits like 4 binkies on the side of the crib for me every night. I rock and nurse her before I put her in the crib so I just grab one....sometimes she'll pull up and switch binkies, haha

[Daffodil]

Originally Posted by Hollybear

Sean sits like 4 binkies on the side of the crib for me every night. I rock and nurse her before I put her in the crib so I just grab one....sometimes she'll pull up and switch binkies, haha

LOL that's so cute!!

[Hollybear]

Originally Posted by Daffodil

LOL that's so cute!!

The best part is that she'll pull the one out of her mouth, look at it, and sort of throw it over the side of the crib.

I think she would totally play with us if we stayed in there. We play with her on our bed after she gets out of the tub at night and she always seems wide awake when we go to put her down....but she still goes down.

[Daffodil]

Originally Posted by Hollybear

The best part is that she'll pull the one out of her mouth, look at it, and sort of throw it over the side of the crib.

I think she would totally play with us if we stayed in there. We play with her on our bed after she gets out of the tub at night and she always seems wide awake when we go to put her down....but she still goes down.

Haha, Sophie is too cute for words.

Yeah I was going to ask you, when she sits up after you put her down, are you still like "goodnight" and leave? I'm wondering if I could do that...the problem of course is we have a mattress on the ground, not a crib. I feel like a crib contains them more (well obviously) so there's not TOO much to do and eventually they will fall asleep. Who knows what my daughter will do. She loves rolling all around on the king sized mattress and yesterday even rolled off of it as I was pretend-sleeping. I was laughing so hard, she was on the floor wimpering like "how did I get here?"

[sweetliberty]

Occasionally I'll see him in there (on the video monitor) playing for a little while but most of the time he'll go straight out as long as we gave him enough in his bottle (his bedtime varies in the amount each night). If we have to go back in there to soothe him we don't play with him because it'll just amp him up and we're really trying to send the message that it's night time and night time is for sleeping.

[faith143]

Lily likes to play around a little bit when I put her down for her morning nap and almost immediately flips over to her belly and is up crawling around the crib. I have finally just let her do her thing and then she falls asleep. Afternoon nap there's no playing around at all, I lay her in there and she goes out. (probably because she played so much in the morning. haha)

Bedtime for the night is like the afternoon nap. She's out.

We use a sound machine in her room on the ocean sound and it has been a really good thing for her sleep schedule and routine.

[Daffodil]

So I'm not exactly sure what to do since we are co-sleeping...maybe there's nothing I can do? I would love to just put her down but she's used to me being there, so I wait until she is asleep before getting up....maybe I should start a "question for co-sleeping babies" thread LOL

LOL just edited the title!

[Jule'sMomInOR]

Juliana always has to be completely asleep before I lay her down. I just don't allow her to play at bedtime. I will give her something to look at that's boring (like a pillow) if she won't nurse or sleep.

Have you tried adding a bath to the bedtime routine? That seemed to help us a little.

Btw, we are now sleeping with the mattress on the floor. It's fun. :-)

[AmandaEliz]

Sigh... Avery's sleep has been a mess since she's had this ear infection for 4 weeks. She has to be totally asleep before she'll lay down at night. She'll play & play if I bring her into our bed. She loves to flop in the pillows & fluffy comforter. She just sits up in her crib & screams if she's not totally asleep. I'm hoping to be able to changes this after we get the ear infection cleared up.

[Daffodil]

Originally Posted by Jule'sMomInOR

Juliana always has to be completely asleep before I lay her down. I just don't allow her to play at bedtime. I will give her something to look at that's boring (like a pillow) if she won't nurse or sleep.

Have you tried adding a bath to the bedtime routine? That seemed to help us a little.

Btw, we are now sleeping with the mattress on the floor. It's fun. :-)

YAY! LOL yes, its nice, isn't it? Except sometimes I STILL forget and grab her and swing over as if the bed was at the normal height, but my feet hit the ground much sooner than expected. So what does hubby think? Do you escape after she falls asleep? That's the best part for me!

So we do a bath every other night and that does help a lot...but like yesterday she had a huge blowout before dinner so I had to give her a bath early and I think that threw her off.

The problem with waiting for her to fall asleep before putting her down is that she now ONLY goes to sleep if she's in bed. Sometimes if she is very tired she'll fall asleep when I'm feeding her a bottle but usually that's not the case. If I walk her around or rock her she won't sleep.

But you did give me an idea (LOL giving her somehing boring to look at)... She has this fisher price musical thing that I play for her at night. I used to play it 3 times at most. But now that she is bigger and can sit up and roll everywhere, SHE plays with it. She constantly turns it on and off. I don't want to get rid of it entirely but maybe only play it (let her play with it) for a few minutes and then I"ll take it away so its dark. She still plays in the dark but maybe it'll help.

[Kathryn Marie]

Scarlett has been doing this for a long time now. It totally messed up her schedule. She would much rather play than sleep. Even if she is so tired she will shake her arms to wake herself up. We have to just put her in bed and leave the room. She never plays though. She always throws a fit. Sometimes we let her cry. Sometimes if she is REALLY crying we will get her back out and soothe her. Sometimes she falls asleep before we put her down. (I cherish those nights)

It took us a while to get the upper hand. It is still a struggle. But I know it will be better for her in the long run.

It depends with Kaileigh but I make sure 9 pm is bed time. Not 8pm one night or 10pm the next night, but 9pm exactly, every day. So that means if she's not tired, she plays around until she falls asleep. If perhaps her afternoon nap was shorter then she goes right to sleep at 9pm. I just find that a set time works best for her.

[Karlie]

I rock Luca to sleep in the living room and put him into his bed when he's already sound asleep so no, he doesn't play. He accidently had a late nap yesterday so wasn't tired at his usual 7pm so I let him play until 7.45 before I tried to get him to sleep but in general it only takes 5 minutes to get him to sleep most nights.

Noah was a pain in the butt to get to sleep at this age. We used to turn all the lights off in our room so it was pitch black. He would also get this surge of energy at bedtime and it took so long to get him to sleep. Basically he would crawl around the bed all hyper and we would just lay next to him but ignore him. Everytime he got close to the edge of the mattress we'd drag him back close to us but not say anything. Eventually he would give up trying and just go to sleep.

[Jule'sMomInOR]

Originally Posted by Daffodil

YAY! LOL yes, its nice, isn't it? Except sometimes I STILL forget and grab her and swing over as if the bed was at the normal height, but my feet hit the ground much sooner than expected. So what does hubby think? Do you escape after she falls asleep? That's the best part for me!

So we do a bath every other night and that does help a lot...but like yesterday she had a huge blowout before dinner so I had to give her a bath early and I think that threw her off.

The problem with waiting for her to fall asleep before putting her down is that she now ONLY goes to sleep if she's in bed. Sometimes if she is very tired she'll fall asleep when I'm feeding her a bottle but usually that's not the case. If I walk her around or rock her she won't sleep.

But you did give me an idea (LOL giving her somehing boring to look at)... She has this fisher price musical thing that I play for her at night. I used to play it 3 times at most. But now that she is bigger and can sit up and roll everywhere, SHE plays with it. She constantly turns it on and off. I don't want to get rid of it entirely but maybe only play it (let her play with it) for a few minutes and then I"ll take it away so its dark. She still plays in the dark but maybe it'll help.

DH and I both are enjoying having the mattress on the floor, but I don't think either of us wants to do it for months and months. I don't know what we will do, though, because Juliana is just about at the weight limit for her side-car crib and when she's mobile, we really need to have the bed on the floor. Do you plan to put Ari in her own room when you move? I think we're a long way from that still.

I would lay her down and escape before, since the side-car crib acted as a bed rail. I didn't go far though, just in case she decided to start crawling at that moment or roll 5+ times to the other side of the bed. I pretty much stayed upstairs, whereas now I can actually go downstairs and cook dinner! Woo hoo!

[Vincent'sMommy]

I'm no help Seema. We totally don't have a schedule and most nights Vincent falls asleep on my chest while I'm on the computer and I'll go in after a while and put him in his crib. For a while, though, I was just taking him to bed with me when I was ready to go even if he wasn't really sleepy. On those nights he would keep sitting up and wanting to play but I wouldn't really do anything with him and just try to get him to lay back down and he would usually fall asleep after about 30 minutes. So I think he sort of realizes that our bed is for sleeping.

[preciousgiftsmama]

Ty used to be real good at our routine of dh and I going up to bed in the evening so dh could actually go to bed for the night since he gets up so early for work. Then we would play with Ty on the bed for a while, then Ty would snuggle down with me to nurse and fall asleep. I would leave him with dh then and I would go down and do chores and have some time for me and get Julia to bed. But about a month ago, Ty figured out how to fight the sleep routine, and now the only way to get him to bed at night is for me to sit on the couch and nurse him to sleep, then lay him down carefully or else he will wake up. Ty knows our family bed is "bedtime" so he will cry sometimes if we even go up to the bed to just play around with dh and Julia

I have never just layed Ty down to sleep and I know I never will because he would scream and feel like I just abandoned him since that is not have we put him to bed. He has only ever snuggled with his "boob" to sleep, and as nice as it sounds to just lay him down to bed, I know it wont be happening anytime soon here. I cant stand for Ty to cry at all, even for a minute, and thats what he would do.

[Wren]

I used to have to rock Stella to sleep and lay her down or she would throw a fit as soon as I got near the crib. I have noticed recently that she will seem really tired, but as soon as I put her in her crib she will stay on her back, but sort of giggle and flirt with me. When I leave the room she will cry for a couple minutes, but then fall asleep. So, I think if she were in bed with me instead of the crib she would definitely try to keep herself up playing.

When she gets up in the morning around 5:30, if I feed her and then bring her into bed with us, she will sit up and play, but if we give her a bottle in her crib and leave her for 10 minutes, she will fall back asleep.

If it's taking her an hour to fall asleep it might actually be because of her naps during the day. How many naps is she getting? I remember my DD at this age had to give up her second nap because it was messing up her bedtime.

I'm no help when it comes to co-sleeping. Caleb has been in his crib since around 2 months old. He usually falls asleep in about 5 minutes. Sometimes he fusses a little but I don't go back in unless he is crying for a few minutes. On the days that he is overly tired he seems to need to fuss a little to wind down.

Good luck.

[sfarrow3]

We are on a pretty strict sleep schedule with both kids. London has a set bed time (8pm) and I try not to put her down any later or earlier. Is she taking a short nap before bed time, like around late afternoon? That could be the culprit. If London plays around when I lay her down it doesn't last long and she is usually asleep in 5 min. Schedules and routines is a must at our house. Caden and London are like that. If they aren't on a set schedule then they don't do well. They even have a set nap schedule during the weekends. Also if London fusses when I put her down usually its because she wants me to pick her up. I will let her fuss for a little while because I know she is not sick or in pain.