DS is 20m and I'm desperate to start trying to help him sleep through the night. until now he's been largely reliant on breastfeeding to help him back to sleep. He has quite a signficant language delay and I suspect he may be autistic, so I'm not sure how much he understands.
We've had a few minor successes where I've been able to settle him by patting, rocking rather than breastfeeding. This is great and I do it when I can, but we have big problems at other times. he gets super distressed and will smack himself in the face and head, bang his head against the wall, smack his face into the mattress and thrash around for ages in my arms. He's tall and heavy, so this is tricky to manage and obviously I'm concerned about him hurting himself.
I know all the advice is to sing, pat, rock etc to comfort them instead, but the problem is that he just isn't comforted by any of that - he screams more and pushes my hands away.
I really don't know what to do - has anyone else experienced the same thing or have any advice? please be gentle - I'm tired and overwhelmed!