Sorry, this isn't really interesting to anyone else but i just feel the need to share my excitement and joy.
DS is 2.4 and has never slept well, largely because i have been quite soft with him, waited by his bed while he fell asleep and let him get in our bed when he woke up at around 1am.
Last week decided to see if the world would come to an end if i left him to fall alseep on his own. After reading bedtime stories i said goodnight, turned off light and left him to it. As expected he bawled and got out of bed. I put him back 5 times in total and he cried pretty hard but after 15 mins he stopped and then fell asleep.
The next night I said goodnight and he just said 'bye bye' and smiled and i left the room. He fell asleep after a short time and there were no tears at all. And this has happened every night since! Four nights in a row now!
I had thought that i would deal with night time wakings in a while - didn't want to handle too much at once. But since we sorted out the bed time problem he's magically started sleeping throught the night too - or at least only coming into our bed at around 5am (which is fine by me). I guess he's not waking up and thinking 'where's she gone?'.
So just wanted to say - hurrah!!! I do realise that it could all go wrong again, but fngers crossed that it won't. Sorry if anyone reads this and thinks 'shut up' cos this hasn;t worked for them, but thought it might give hope to people who've been in my position. It's only a few weeks since i was posting in this topic and despairing that he would ever sleep well!