I tried all sorts of different techniques over the first few months after Stella was born but now, nearly 4 months in and I can put her down first time everytime and know that she's not going to open her eyes and look at me the minute I put her

into her bed or wake up shortly after I've put her down! And we've been doing this successfully for the last 7wks.

I know I'll get to a point where we won't be able to use this method when she gets bigger but for the time being, at least I know I can put her down and get my own comfortable few hours sleep.

Babies have a different sleep pattern to adults we still go through the same process but for babies it is much shorter periods. There is the light sleep or REM (Rapid Eye Movement) period where you'll see them doing things like the good old rolling the eyes back and quite animated breathing and moving hands and feet, you can see they're having dreams etc, and then after about 20mins of this they'll go into the "deep sleep".

You'll recognise the "deep sleep" because suddenly things will quieten down breathing becomes much softer and less laboured, and theres no more wriggling. The trick is, as much as you may be so exhausted and want to get to bed asap, you need to sit and cuddle the baby after they've had a big feed, just letting them sleep in your lap, until they are into the "deep sleep" phase. You'll then be able to pick them up and put them straight to bed without having them wake up or even stir as you're tucking them in etc.

You probably wont have so much trouble during night feeds because provided you get up reasonably quickly if they're actually crying, then they wont wake themselves up completely. Stella still wakes herself up and goes back to sleep, I can hear her making little noises, stretching or farting (!!) but I don't get up for these things.

I wish I had known about this earlier on in the process, originally it used to take me anything from 1.5 to 3 hours to get her to sleep because I was trying to get her back into the cot too quickly and she was still in the light sleeping (REM phase) and realised she was being put down and would protest and cry until I picked her up again.

Now at almost 14wks, I'm able to get her to bed around 9.30pm and she wont wake me until around 6am. If only I didn't have to wake up halfway thru the night and express before my boobs turned into rockmelons I'd be happy. Now we're working on pulling back bed time to around 8.30pm or earlier for a longer sleep.

If you're having problems getting your baby to bed first time, you really should give it a try, it may take you 15 or 20mins longer after you've fed them, but I'm sure you'll find it worth it!