10 month old sleep training

[MatchsticksForMyEyes]

My son had co-slept with me from the day we brought him home. He has reflux and it was just easier.

However, he has become more restless at night of late and increasingly wanted to have his own space, only settling if I put him down away from me in the bed.

So I started keeping him in his cot. He has always gone down awake and gone off to sleep no problem.

Currently he goes down around 6.30 and sleeps til about midnight/1 ish. Unfortunately after I feed him then ( and he is wide awake sitting up in his cot), he only goes about 2 hours between wakings until morning.

I am not sure how to proceed as he goes straight back to sleep after a bf. I don't know if he is waking so frequently for reassurance that I am still there, after all he is in the full grip of separation anxiety, but I know he isn't hungry and would like him to go longer, ideally not be feeding at night still.

I would try settling him without a feed, but when I have tried he gets furious and will go back to sleep if I leave the room ( once he's had a feed). DD is in the next bedroom and am worried if I don't feed him and try and settle him in the room he will scream and wake her. But I don't want to just ignore him.

Should I go in but just offer him water? Still bf at night for now?

Any thoughts?

Hi my DS is also 10 months. We did some Controlled Crying about a month ago and the results were really quick.
However like your DS he is now getting a bit of separation anxiety so I'd be more anxious to try it at this stage.
The thing is to go in and reassure them but then leave straight away,they do get very angry though don't they?!
No words of advice about your eldest though. My DD has been disturbed by DS's crying occasionally but they do get used to it I think. And with controlled crying the results are quick so it wouldn't last long.

When my DS was 6/7 months old he used to always wake up at exactly the same times and would always expect to be fed back to sleep. Eventually we had enough of broken nights. So one night my DH settled him back to sleep instead of me, by holding, rocking and shushing him. First night it took ages to calm him down, more than one hour but he did not wake up after that until 6 am. Took about 2 or 3 nights until he slept through.

Best to get your DH involved as there is definitely no breastfeed to get from him! Our DS only woke up twice per night before we did this so we decided to tackle both wake up times at once in order to be consistent. If your DS wakes up more often you might want to start with one or two wake ups first.
Most people recommend to tackle the later wake ups first, in my experience though it works very well if you tackle it from the first wake up. My DS used to wake at 11 for the first time, his second wake up was usually around 4. Once we managed to settle him at 11 without feeding we were interested to see if he would still wake at 4 - and he didn't, he slept until 6.

Oh, and even if this is not controlled crying, do expect some screaming. But it's more like protesting IYSWIM.

HTH