18 month old night waking, help!

[collette21]

My 18 month old little boy has never been a brilliant sleeper to be honest but until the last month or so he was easily comforted back to sleep with a bottle - bad habit I know! now he doesn't respond to this and on a few occaisions we have let him sleep in out bed - another bad habit but when its 2 am and he's been screaming full throttle or an hour + I'll do anything for a couple hours uniterrupted! Now he wakes most nights and screams screams screams until we take him in with us where obvioulsy he falls asleep without a fuss! He's also a terrible fidget so he keeps my partner and I awake on and off even when he's sleeping away. We've also got a new baby on the way and are desperate to resolve the problem so he can sleep soundly through the night in his cot. I don't like the idea of full on controlled crying, any ideas??? he does take a comforter to bed with him, doesn't have a dummy and even with disturbed sleep still wakes up before 6am most mornings.

sorry if i rambled on a bit there, i;m sure there's loads of people who've been in same situation so if anyone found something that has worked a treat i'd be really grateful of a respose :-)

[Habbibu]

DD did this at 18 months - I think it's pretty common. We did a kind of gradual withdrawal at bedtime which helped us a lot - starting with shushing and patting dd until she was fast asleep, then gradually reducing what we did over the days, then sitting gradually further and further away. This took a few weeks, but was calm and painless, and worked well for us. She has a lullaby CD she loves, on sometimes now if she wakes in the night crying, we put that on for her - if she's quite distressed she also gets a wee bit of milk in a cup. Good luck.

[SharpMolarBear]

no advice but if there is anything that works I'd love to know