I’ve reached a bit of a breaking point, my 20 month old is a very bad sleeper, always has been. I think I average about 4-5 broken hours of sleep a night max and this has been going on for months. I am exhausted and barely functioning (I work part time and I feel like I have become useless at my job) and I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety and probably depression too. He seems to only regress and I don’t see it improving without intervention.
So how things work: he is breastfed to sleep at bedtime and all wakings (he insists). I tried to gently night wean recently (teaching self settling and not feeding at wakings before 4am), but after a few weeks he was still resisting a lot (30mins + hysterical screaming) and one particularly bad evening DH couldn’t take it anymore, said its obvs not working and I abandoned my efforts, fed him to sleep and he has been worse than ever ever since! (At the time I was relieved because the screaming was really wearing on me, but I now massively regret it) I do all bedtimes and wakings, he becomes hysterical with DH at night and also if I try anything but feeding. He eats really well and naps well at nursery.
He has a cold at the moment, but I feel like there is always some reason why I shouldn’t do anything right now. I’m thinking I probably need to stop breastfeeding entirely to have any hope? Should I just do it? Any tips?
If you made it through my rambling post, thank you! Any and all advice gratefully received.