The 7-week-old baby sleeps well in my arms but wakes up as soon as I put her in the crib/bassinet. I tried waiting an hour to ensure she was deep asleep, but it didn’t work. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
There are several things you can try.
Warm up the bassinet/crib (a few ways to achieve this: warm water bottle, heating pad, and remove before placing the baby.
Try laying the baby down bottom first, then head.
When you place them down, do so slowly.
When taking your hands away, press down into the mattress and gradually move them out.
I hope one of these tips is useful!
Thank you, I will give them a try. Hopefully, one would work.
Using a heating pad was a game changer for our newborns—they’d stay asleep for at least a few hours. We also found that slowly removing our hands, starting with the one on the bottom and waiting a few minutes before removing the one by their head, helped so much. Our son was one of those newborns who could sleep for hours in your arms but would wake up the moment you put him down.
This phase will pass, don’t worry. You’re doing great! Now, our 5-month-old can sleep for 8+ hours in his crib without needing to be rocked or fed to sleep. He can self-soothe and occasionally wakes if he doesn’t eat enough during the day, but it gets easier!
No OP, but I am in a horrible sleep period and was wondering whether you have to sleep train or do anything else to achieve independent sleep.
If you wait an hour, you’re probably allowing her to cycle back into active sleep phase.
When he was a newborn, we had the best results putting him down 15-20 minutes after he fell asleep.
13-17 minutes was our sweet spot, and he always woke up.
Yeah, she’s startled.Sometimes she doesn’t startle but wakes up in 2 minutes. But I’d give it a shot. Thank you! 
There are a lot of good tips here, but please, when none of them work, don’t beat yourself up. This is normal! Babies are wired to stay close to their adults. It’s the only place they feel safe in the environment they adapted to. They aren’t adapted to sleep in bassinets in houses, sheltered against the weather, and protected from insects, wild animals, and other humans. Your baby doesn’t know they are safe alone in the bassinet! They are adapted to living in the wild where anything could hurt or kill them. Living out there only works when the caregiver stays close at all times. That’s why babies are so alert.
It gets better when they are older. Our baby is 13 months now and sleeps a lot deeper than in the newborn days. I once saw someone comment that they could literally throw their 5-year-old in her bed without her waking up.
When it turns out that your baby just won’t sleep in the bassinet, please look into the rules of safe co-sleeping. When sleep deprivation hits, it is much safer to chill with the baby in a safe environment than to fall asleep while holding them in an unsafe environment (such as chairs, recliners, or sofas; they are NOT safe!).
This is the best answer IMO. Everyone should learn about safe cosleeping so that when the deprivation hits, you’re making safe choices. You’re not doing anything wrong with the bassinet situation, it’s really just the way babies’ instinct works that they don’t want to be there.