Bad Night Habits - Best Way to Fix?

[Yimpy]

My wife and I transitioned about 4 weeks ago with her returning to work full time and me dropping down to part time hours and essentially being a stay-at-home Dad with our DS, our first now 8 months. It hasn't been an easy transition but it was something we both wanted to do and I have tried my best to dive in head first. There have been a few niggling issues but we are trying to work through them.

DS is normally a really peaceful baby and has a good routine established but I have formed a bad habit over the past few weeks of nursing him to sleep at night over my shoulder with a blanket wrapped around him. He now won't go down at night unless somebody does that and if he knows I am in the house he won't go to sleep for anybody else and gets very upset, trying to reach out for me and aggressively wriggling away from his mum. If I leave the room at this point, he screams and cries until I come back in. I know it was a silly thing to do and have been chastised already but now I need to fix it.

At first we tried just having my DW put him down every time he went to sleep but it just resulted in a crying fit that would last an hour or two before we gave in and I settled him (he will fall asleep in about 10 seconds when I do it). She is quite upset about this.

I'm now basically putting him down when it is time to sleep and this is also resulting in a horrible crying fit. This makes my wife very upset as he used to sleep no problem when she did it and now he won't. So she gives up quickly and asks me just to settle him I am certain that the only way to fix this is to power through it, get him down and let him cry until he falls asleep. Does this sound about right? Or am I causing myself more problems in the future by doing this?

It is worth pointing out that if I am at work, she has no trouble getting him to sleep. It's only if he knows that I'm there.

Is it a problem at night as well? I.e. do you need to do it when he wakes up at night? If not, I would just go with the flow and do whatever works. If he goes to sleep like that, why is it a problem?
My DS1 went through lot of stages - selfsettling, breastfeeding to sleep, falling asleep in arms, then selfsettling again - changing without any clear reasons. I was worried about "bad habits" at first, but then just relaxed and it was much easier just to to do whatever works at the time.

He sleeps very well through the night, to be honest. His gums hurt sometimes and if he loses his dummy you might hear him whinge. He never fully wakes up though. Putting the dummy back in his mouth is usually enough to get him to go straight back over to sleep.

I also have no trouble putting him down for a nap when he is tired/grumpy. He only naps maybe 3 times a day for about 30/45mins but he sleeps very well during it and as soon as I put the dummy in and put his blanket on him, his head droops and he closes his eyes. I usually put him straight down without any singing/cuddling or anything.

It's just at night - going to sleep. Whenever somebody else tries to coax him to sleep he will fight and get angry/cry and try to get to me. If we put him straight into bed he will cry and cry until somebody cuddles and sings to him to get him down. After that he's down for the night.

He's 8 months old, cuddle him to sleep. I still cuddle my 19 month old to sleep and sometimes my 3.4 yr old will snuggle up with mummy to fall asleep. It takes moments.

If he settled quickly being cuddled it will do no harm. All it will do is make him feel safe and loved and you get to snuggle your baby boy.

I agree with previous poster - cuddling and/or singing to sleep will do no harm! On a contrary, it is lovely time that you'll miss in few years time.
With my first boy, at the beginning I was worried about self settling, bad habits, etc, but life became much simpler when I started following his lead and did what he needed at the time - we both got calmer and happier.