Hi everyone,
my almost 9 month DS has always been a bad sleeper, and from about 4-7 months he slept in bed with me, permanently attached to the breast and basically comfort sucked all night. At about 7.5 months I very reluctantly decided to try CC because he just wasn't getting enough long stretches of sleep, and had always been fed to sleep so I wanted to get out of that habit too. Anyway it worked really well and very quickly he was self settling at bedtime without making a sound, and sleeping until 4-5am when he would wake for a feed, then back to sleep again, and he was in his cot all night too which was great. This lasted about 4 weeks and now we are in 8/9 month sleep regression. He now rarely self settles at bedtime and needs his back stroked until he falls asleep, then wakes in the middle of the night crying hard and refusing to go back to sleep. He carries on crying if I hold and rock him, or if I try to settle him in the cot, and it can take a couple of hours for him to get back to sleep. I have now resorted to bringing him into bed when he's like this, he still takes a while to go to sleep but at least I'm lying down. Last night was particularly bad, it took 2 hours to get him to sleep at bedtime, and then he woke after 1 hour. Anyway, I'm a bit worried that if he ever gets out of this regression phase we will have all our old bad habits again. Can anyone offer any advice on ways to survive this? It wouldn't be so bad if he would go back to sleep quickly when he wakes, but he just gets really upset and cries, and nothing will console him.
Thanks :)