Hi all
Just checking in. Nothing much has changed here - sleep is pretty stable at the moment, we've been on 2 wakes a night for a while and barring illness, teething etc that has been pretty consistent for the past few weeks. I'm still feeding when she wakes, and until I stop doing that I doubt we are going to get down to one wake, but I'm not quite brave enough yet to put myself through the upset. DD is teething again and has been uncharacteristically grumpy so I'm inclined to wait until that calms down.
BB we did some gentle sleep training with the help of a sleep consultant. She was great, got us from co sleeping, feeding to sleep and up every hour with regular 2-hour-long night wakings to where we are now with DD in her own room, able to put her to bed awake and usually going 3-4 hours between wakes. We have finished up doing a version of gradual retreat and the fact she's not sleeping through the night and is still feeding at night is entirely down to us not being ready to push forward rather than any deficiency in the sleep consultant's advice. It has been really hard with lots of setbacks and it has not been a no-cry solution (we weren't promised no cry but we did want low cry which is perhaps why we haven't got as far as we might have done). But life is a lot less stressful now and we even managed a night out at the weekend, my mum came over and did bedtime and DD went to sleep for her more easily than she does for us! So I think sleep training can be a good move if you find an approach you're comfortable with and that suits your parenting style. Sleep consultants aren't for everyone (probably not necessary for everyone) but it was terrific for us as we were absolutely clueless, we had so many bad habits we didn't know where to start, and what she did really well was break our numerous issues down into manageable chunks so we addressed them one step at a time at a pace we were comfortable with. Having someone at the end of a phone/email after a bad night to offer reassurance and a plan B really helped me when things got tough.
Sorry, that was a bit of an essay! Hope some of that was useful.
Cakebaby it sounds like you are doing brilliantly. Settling himself and going to sleep without feeds are really going to help the move to his own bed. They are the key things the SC had us work on before the move so it definitely sounds like you're heading in the right direction :-)
Waves to all. Sorry not to name check more, I'm shattered, last night was a bad one with crying at bedtime and during the night but DD has had a dodgy tummy all day, no fewer than 7 noxious nappies, which might explain it. I've been working so DD has been at her grandma's all day, I'm a bit guilty that she had all the nappies to deal with but not too much!