At my wits end, would prefer no bashing (but accept I may get some, I wanted the traffic of AIBU!). My baby will be six months in a couple of days. He has been getting steadily a worse sleeper since around four months, with a couple of periods of brief respite - he wakes up around 6 times a night, with the longest period of sleep between bedtime at 7pm and wake-up at about 10pm (which means it's possible but restrictive for me to get in some sleep then). He then wakes around every 60/90 minutes. I was feeding him back to sleep every time, but that's stopped working and we get long, and very unhappy, awake periods. Things were a bit better when he slept in a Next To Me but he outgrew it (kept waking up hitting the side) and there is no physical way to fit his cotbed alongside our bed - the Next to Me only just fitted.
So, since he outgrew the Next To Me I've been taking him into our bed more and more as this didn't stop the wakings but getting out of bed every time was killing me. This got more frequent over Christmas, when we were staying with family for nearly two weeks and very conscious of him waking up other people, so we were resorting to him sleeping with us earlier and earlier in the night. I've always hated cosleeping - I sleep dreadfully with him in the bed - but was willing to accept this but then on New Years' Day woke up to find I'd pulled the covers, which I'd carefully put below my waist, up over me and over his head in the night and that I was also partially lying on him - he was very deeply asleep so didn't wake instantly when I tried to wake him and that 10 seconds felt like the longest and by far the worst of my life; I was retching with horror in the belief that I had killed him. Writing this now is making me cry. He was fine (though very cross at me shouting at him and shaking him awake!) but I don't want to ever feel like that again, ever in my life. To be very clear : I absolutely know that cosleeping can be very safe and works brilliantly for a lot of people - I'm not at all anti-co sleeping in principle - but I now feel that I never want to do it again and that that is a very hard line for me.
The question is what my alternatives are? If I get up to feed him six times a night I basically don't sleep, and I'm back at work this week (I work mostly from home and DH is now on leave with him, so this isn't a very rough transition for DS; I don't actually think he's noticed so far, though we're only on day two!). There is also what probably adds up to two hours or more of him crying across the night as I keep trying to put him in his cot after he falls asleep feeding, failing, and having to rock him as he cries. It can take six or seven attempts to do this (which is why we gave up on putting him in his cot while staying with other people). There is considerably more crying, and usually total failure, if DH tries to do this without me feeding him first, so him taking over night wakings means more tears and even less sleep for everyone. Part of me wonders whether we should bite the bullet and do a form of sleep training (the only one I'll currently consider is gradual retreat) so at least the crying is, hopefully, 'going somewhere'. Part of me feels bad for considering it. But everyone I know seems to either cosleep or sleep train (or have a magical sleeping baby), and I wonder if I'm being unrealistic to even think it's possible to do neither? AIBU to think that? And what would people do?