DD is anticipating sleep and begins crying...

[banzai75x]

Hi,

I've read that establishing a good sleep routine is key to getting your child to sleep. My DD is 4 mo's old and we have established a sleep routine of feeding, bathing (or dunk in the tub with warm water), short cuddling and then put her down to sleep.

We've found that as soon as take DD out of the tub and start to dry her, she starts crying as if she is anticipating being put down. We think this is so, because my husband has been doing this as of late and yesterday I picked her up and she would calm down, but once given back to hubby to be put down, she would start crying again. She would also constantly stare at him while I would hold her.

Is this normal? Should we modify the sleep ritual?

BTW it still takes 20-30 minutes of her protesting before she goes to bed. Some nights it only takes 10 and other nights it takes 30. It doesn't seem to be getting better.

Please advise.

[ahrimie]

Maybe she just wants to be with you?? I think even at that age, they can prefer one over the other for certain times. There was point (around 4-5 months I think) that I felt like my DD wanted my husband at night. She wouldn't even calm down for me and it wasn't nursing she wanted... but when my husband went in to soothe her, she would get happy and coo a lot. I think she just missed him because he was working a lot at the time.

With that said, do you finish up her routine in her room? There were times when trying to establish a routine, my DD would start to protest the second we got into her room. So, I started doing "fun" things in there with her. We would nurse in there after naps and before naps, read books. We spend more time in there than we used to and she doesn't have that problem anymore. Try that and see if it works :)