Last night ,waking up at 2:30, I tried MILD, and it seemed like it would work very well. Every time my brain wandered to a different scenario I imagined how I would realize I was dreaming and go through what I wanted to do in my dream. I also was repeating “I will have a dream. I am dreaming. I am aware that I’m dreaming.” However, I could not fall asleep until 4:30, which was extremely frustrating.
When I finally fell asleep, I kind of experienced the transition between waking and sleeping. I remember music playing very realistically [albeit with changed lyrics] and me struggling to try to sleep and I eventually had to stop paying attention. I then had a dream of me walking downstairs, and it was dark. I thought I may’ve gotten up too early because I thought we still had school [summer break just started]. I checked the clock, which said it was 9:30, and I realized that this was strange and that I was dreaming. I blinked my eyes and was back in bed. I couldn’t sleep again until 5 and at that point I had abandoned all attempts to MILD to try to just get sleep. I woke again at 6 and couldn’t go back to sleep.
I have committed to getting fairly proficient at lucid dreaming over the summer, and I therefore have plenty of time to work to get better. However, it would be nice someone had an easy way to fall back asleep, because I’m pretty sure it would be fairly easy to do a successful MILD if I could sleep afterward.
TL;DR: How can I fall asleep after a MILD in under an hour?
i have noticed that MILD doesn’t work very well in the late night. this morning i had a LD on accident, cause i woke up at 6 (getting up in 2 hours) and i don’t if i even said something, but i think i repeated “i am dreaming now” at least once or twice. when i was asleep, i immediately knew i was sleeping! so the thing is… maybe you woke up too early. i had this dream after 6 hours of sleep or so. every person has a different time interval before they can have LDs. so try to find yours.
also a really good thing is just to relax. after my most recent LDs, i have been trying for 2 months, and i have tried much much too hard. after this i accidentally found a LD mentor 
he made me relax and not punish myself emotionally when i fail. he just started telling me what to do, so it kind of fell off my shoulders. that eased the situation A LOT. and here i am, less than a week after meeting him - 3 LDs in one night!
and trust me. 5 or so night ago i had the same terrible thing you had 
i was trying a DEILD timer… wakes you up every 10-20 minutes to make you have a LD in the end of the sequence. turned out i’m not that type of person 
i woke up at around 4 and could not fall asleep till 6 when i got up through force (i get up at 8.30 usually). it was one of the worst nights this year
main this is just don’t give up! and don’t stress yourself or strain yourself too much. find someone to share this with. it’ll be a lot easier. you can even come to the LD4all chat and just talk to us all. it helps
Also, MILD isn’t meant to keep you awake. You want the words to be repeated a few times so your subconscious gets the message, but it’s not supposed to keep you awake. Some people might be able to fall asleep while repeating things to themselves, but if it’s going to keep you awake, that’s not the point. MILD isn’t WILD. 
I’d suggest repeating a few times and really focus on those few times, then fall asleep normally.
Thanks for the replies. Even when I stopped repeating the thing to myself I still couldn’t fall asleep. But I did do pretty well realizing that I was in the dream, though I woke up right after that since I wasn’t in a very deep sleep. I’m definitely not punishing myself, and I think even though I couldn’t sleep, I am still off to a good start. I’ll try MILD before I go to bed at night and see how it works out.