5 month old crying before bed-time?

Question

My 5 mth old girl goes down well for naps during the day (3 hrs in all) and sleeps through the night from 7pm to 7am. However, she seems to have become aware that after her bath at night (which she loves) she gets her bottle and is put down to bed. So the minute she is taken out of the bath and we start dressing her for bed she starts crying quite loudly! She is not hungry as I top her up at 5pm to make sure. As soon as I then put her down to sleep she goes over in about 5 to 10 mins. However, I would like to make the experience more pleasurable. Can anyone reassure me this is just a stage?!?!? Any tips???

Answer 1

it's definitely a stage. My son was the same. Try changing her pattern a bit by putting her down an hour or so later after her bath. Is she on solids yet? If not, try giving her something more filling and she'll start to crash when she's really sleepy. :)

Answer 2

She's probably just tired and needs to whine herself to sleep.  Lots of babies just need to expel that last little bit of energy before drifting off to sleep.  She may continue to do this or stop in about a week.  If you know for certain there is nothing wrong (ie wet diaper, hungry, teething, etc) and she is otherwise happy and content, there is nothing wrong with putting her down and letting her cry for a few minutes before she sleeps.

Answer 3

She might just be crying through tiredness.  A good bedtime routine would be a nice warm bath, dried in a big, soft towel, a baby massage with some warm baby oil, pyjamas, last  feed, story or musical box and a dimmed or switched off light - same time every night.

You might need to cut down the amount of time she is sleeping during the day as she is sleeping 15 hours per day and will need less and less as time goes on.

Answer 4

I think it is just a stage.  I wouldn't recommend making any changes due to these actions or you would be reinforcing the behavior.  She will eventually catch on that this is the routine and learn to accept it...till she gets a little older of course.  Plan on having bedtime issues througout childhood, just comes with the territory.  Good Luck.

Answer 5

This is definitely just a stage. She has learnt the routine and she is testing you out to see if you are going to give in to her and let her stay up longer or get you to stay with her.

5-10 mins is no time at all to get settled...my daughter used to take over an hour!

Stick with your routine and when she realises that she isn't going to get her own way, she will just give in and accept it.

You feel really bad doing it, but it is so much better than getting into the staying-by-my-side-for-an-hour parlava!

Hang in there it'll soon pass!