8 month old sleep

[AlbusPercival]

Does anyone have any gentle suggestions?

DS only sleeps for a maximum of 3 hours, then needs to be fed to sleep again. I am so so tired.

Everyone is suggesting sleep training. But he is such a happy attached little soul, I don't want to break his spirit and know mummy won't come.

Is there any gentle way of trying to extend his sleep?

There are lots of gentle ways to do it. They mostly are not quick fixes though.

The first issue to tackle is feeding in the night and feeding to sleep. This will come before tackling any sleep issues.

Baby's body clock will be such that he has got used to having calories in the night. Be they needed or not, baby's body has biologically got used to expecting those calories in the night - so will be giving baby hunger signs.

You can't expect baby to learn independant sleep cues whilst being hungry at the same time. So Task 1 is stop feeding in the night, or limit it in whatever way you see fit so that baby is not used to always being fed in the night.

I wouldn't suggest you expect this will solve sleep issues, it won't just yet. So it needs some setting of realistic expectations. You need to replace the comfort of feeding to sleep with the comfort of something else. I favour independant tools (like dummy or co.firter toy) but parent-led tools may be more suitable to you (rocking, co sleeping, cuddling).

The priority initially is not going overboard forcing independant sleep. First focus on achieving night weaning. Give this a while so that daytime calorie intake adjusts and baby's body rhythms get used to no calories in the night, so that hunger is no longer a factor.

Once night weaned, then is the process of starting settling techniques that encourage longer sleeps. There is no point worrying about this stage just yet. It might be that 90% of the job is done once night weaned, so independant settling might be mych easier once not feeding to sleep and whennight weaned.

Thanks

DH has tried getting him back down, but he screams until fed. So I'm at a bit of a loss on what to do

It doesn't have to be DH. You could do the night weaning yourself, if you prefer.