11 month old resisting sleep

[Bellerina2]

DS is nearly one and has never been a great sleeper. I still have to feed him to sleep for daytime naps but this is getting increasingly difficult as he wriggles around a lot. I end up putting him in his cot and leaving him to cry for a bit to tire him out and then I can usually feed him to sleep. But I don't want to have to do this all the time. He just will not self-settle for me. People have suggested controlled crying and crying it out but that does not work as he doesn't stop screaming. The unlatching in the NCSS doesn't work either as it wakes him up, and pick up put down was the same. He hates his cot and screams every time we put him in it. In the evenings he gets a bottle of formula and DP doea bedtime. This involves DS rolling around on our bed until he falls asleep but as its on the bed we can't leave him.

DS also wakes up for night feeds. Still. I'm going back to work in a month and would really like for him to sleep through. I'd like to night wean him but know he would scream so loud that the neighbours might alert social services!!

Any suggestions or tips? I'm getting desperate here!

Psychologically, children need something to help them settle, they do not have the emotional capacity to just lie down and go to sleep like an adult would until about school age.

This is what dummies are for.

Unfortunately, sleep props are established from a young age (as you have found with feeding to sleep) and so you have left it very late to establish a dummy, which would allow for comfort sucking to get to sleep.

So you will need to face facts that removing the comfort sleep trigger will cause your DS a lot of distress. You could try replacing the sleep prop currently used (feeding) with a more sustainable one like a blankie or a special teddy. But like the dummy, hard to establish this so late.

Persevering with shush pat is probably your best plan.