Am I harming my baby?

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Posting here for traffic. Thanks in advance for reading.

I have an 11 month old (and an older child with SEN). My baby has needed a bottle of milk to nap and sleep from around 5mo. He was sleeping independetly and through the night until then. He has since woken up numerous times for milk overnight also. Now things have settled with my older child, I want to tackle these habits with the baby. He won't rock to sleep. I cannot stay with him until he falls asleep since I cannot leave my older child alone for long. For the past 2 nights I've been feeding him outside of the cot then placing him in the cot awake but tired. I stay with him for a couple of minutes then leave. He cries a lot and I check in on him every 3 minutes until his crying becomes intermittent. On the first day this took around 10 minutes. Today it's taken 4 minutes.

I've paid for a sleep coach to help with both children but I'm struggling with her advice. She's saying that I shouldn't leave him if he sounds upset? He does sound upset and distressed when I leave. I wish I could stay with him which is what she suggests but it's impossible as a single parent. I did for my eldest child and now I'm stuck with a 2 year old who is addicted to her bottle all day and cannot sleep without it. I really didn't want to make the same mistakes with my son but equally I don't want to harm him, give him an attachment disorder later in life, or dysregulate or overwhelm his little nervous system.

Please talk some sense into me!

How do parents in other cultures have sex?

Do you wanna say that British people transfer babies to their own rooms because parents need to have sex? Wild

Many babies do need to learn how to sleep without a sleep aid. For some children their sleep aid may be feeding to sleep, some being rocked, others co sleeping, dummy etc. It's not a problem if you are happy to do it and you don't mind being up numerous times a night to help them go back to sleep (though I think it's better for their development if they can learn to have more continuous restorative sleep). Some parents have other children, have to get up for work early, have an important job in which they need to be well rested, they need to protect their mental health and their own physical health to name a few reasons so they teach their child to sleep unaided (using a variety of methods). Every situation, child and family is different.

Thanks for your responses.

He woke up 6 times last night. I'm now at work and utterly exhausted.

I've tried cosleeping when them both but it doesn't work. My toddler is now mostly sleeping through the night again thankfully, so I do cosleep with the baby usually for the latter half of the night.

Well given I’ve seen many babies cry for HOURS on end, while being held, fed, changed, rocked and sung to - I imagine for most babies all this damage is already done before they cry for ten minutes with regular check in.

It takes longer than 4 minutes to get a bottle to a baby who thinks they’re starving to death - yet most of them seem to manage unscathed.

This is a very good point. He's cried for much longer stretched being held and rocked to sleep. The only 2 things that help are a bottle or laying with him. I wish I could stay with him until he slept all the time. I did with my daughter until she started falling asleep independently at around 16 months. But I'm struggling to manage them both. I really don't want to have to use the TV or video calling family to distract my daughter while putting him to sleep - we've been screen free for a while now- but I'm finding myself having to use these things to allow me to manage his bedtime. It's really difficult and I worry I'm doing it all wrong and harming them both.

I think being screen free will be so much more valuable to your children’s brains than a few minutes crying before bed when they are otherwise well loved and attended to.