AIBU in enlisting DP help in sleep training - and how?

[Rideforthehills]

Our 8 month old has not managed more than 4 hours straight since birth and very often less. This week he has started crawling and he is waking every 1-2hours (I think connected because once awake he wants to crawl in his cot).
He goes to bed at 9pm and gets up at 9am ( this fits our work and the temperature of where we are living - its still 12 hours). During the day he has two one hour naps.
I need to do something to sort this out - I am working nearly full time hours.
At the moment he is still sharing our room, he is bf so I find it easier and helps the amount of sleep I get to not traipse off to another room.

So the AIBU - DP is pretty much exclusively sleeping in a different room so he gets uninterrupted sleep so is never on hand to help with nighttime wakings. We are now both working an equal amount so no reason that he needs more sleep than me.
He feels that as he can't breastfeed he can't help anyway. But I think he can look after all the wake ups except those that really need milk. His solution to me getting more sleep was to tell me to go to bed when the baby does.

How can I improve our sleep situation and how can I get DP to take more of the load of night time wakings?

I think you need to look at night weaning him. At the moment he will wake because his body is expecting food, so his biorhythms are set to wake every few hours for a top up.

I would set core hours between which you will not feed him and get DP to agree to take DS on for those hours. You have him for the other hours.

If you dont have a room for DS to sleep in, then the person 'on duty' takes the bedroom with DS and the other is in the guest room, and then switch over.

It will probably take a few nights to get through the upset when DS is only offered water between midnight and 4am (for example) and then you can stretch it longer by half an hour and then wait until he has done the new stretch for 3 nights in a row and then extend it half an hour again.

Alternatively go cold turkey and do it all in one or two goes, but there will be lots of crying and not much sleep for anyone.

Hi @SeaToSki, thanks that is pretty much the conclusion we just came to. We have agreed that I have responsibility from 2am to wake up. And yes we are going to do the swapping rooms thing too, though I'm tempted to put baby in his own room at the same time as starting this change to get it all done at once.

I would def put him in his own room and just get it all done at once.