Ways to get DH more involved in bedtime?

[lessmith23]

DD is 9 months old and we are at at the lowest point we've ever been at from a sleep perspective. She's never been a great sleeper since she was 3.5 months old but lately it's almost unbearably bad. I can count on 1 hand the number of times in the past few months that she's made it past the 30 minute mark after she goes to sleep at night without me having to nurse her back down.

I'm starting to feel really burnt out and a little resentful of the little time I have to myself. DD is waking on average every 1.5-2 hours at night and I need help.

DH is happy to help but lately it seems that DD is not interested in Dad at bedtime (when he used to be just as acceptable as mom). Even though she doesn't want to nurse she wants me for comfort and not dad and will cry and get very upset if he tries to sooth her.

So my question is, how did you integrate dad into the nighttime routine more? I still nurse DD to sleep so when in our routine should I do that? Also DH works nights occasionally so when I do the whole routine myself would we be backtracking?

I would GREATLY appreciate any help from others. I read a lot about this time be difficult but I gotta say it's even worse than I imagined!

[Alisse]

I use to nurse my son down every night up until a couple of months or so when he wouldn't stay down even though he was clearly tired. So what we ended up doing was putting him in a carrier on daddy after nursing. Usually this does the trick but on difficult nights my husband will go and bop around in a dark room while singing. We've noticed that if our son sees me while he's doing this, he may get crankier and be harder to calm down. If he fusses A LOT and seems to be getting worse, i'll take him to nurse him again, then he goes back on daddy, (who's found that the carrier is a must; holding him in his arms doesn't do it). Most nights though, he falls asleep on daddy after a short while right after nursing.