Hello everyone.
Long time lurker first time signer-upper.
37 year old first time dad here. My partner is 38 and has two children from a previous relationship who are 9 and 12. Our son is 16 months old.
He has never been a good sleeper. In his 16 months of life he has 'slept through' (from about 7pm to 6am) twice.
We have never let him cry it out, we've always attended to him within a couple of minutes (basically as quickly as we could get there). Often only a boob would calm him down / get him back to sleep and so often he'd end up in the bed with us all night. This continued even after we moved him to his own room and it was a constant back and forth and ultimately in our bed again.
When he was about 9 months, we tried "pick up put down" which is a method involving picking him up, holding him until he stops crying, and then putting him back down immediately, awake. At the start, this involved 100s of pick ups and put downs as he would immediately cry and bounce up again. However, eventually he would stay down and go back to sleep. This solved the boob addiction at that point and led to improvement, and by the time he was a year old we had got to the point where he was only getting up a couple of times a night and I was able to get him back down quickly (usually). I had to do all the night visits as if my partner went in he would just demand boob and we'd be back at square one.
Then in May this year, a month after his birthday, our house was flooded and we had to first of all move to my parents in law for a month, then to a temporary accommodation (where we will be until probably January).
The pick up put down stopped working completely when we moved in with the in laws. He just could not be settled and it was keeping everyone up for hours. Many times I or my partner ended up downstairs with him at 3am/4am playing with his toys just to calm him down. We also started to have a problem with him going to sleep at all. After pick up put down although he was still waking up a couple of times he was great going to sleep. We had a routine and I would put him down awake and he would fiddle about in his cot for a bit and make himself comfortable then would just go to sleep by himself. Almost immediately after we moved he would no longer go to sleep by himself and would just cry as soon as we put him in the cot. I think that was down to interrupting the routine but it added to the whole problem.
Now, because the temporary accommodation is smaller than our house he doesn't have his own room anymore and is back in a cot in our room. We have eventually been able to get back to our bedtime routine and he has been going down OK but he is waking up at 11pm/midnight and is literally inconsolable. I cannot do pick up put down because he is now so strong and thrashes out if I do it and he's in danger of hurting himself or me. It's also pointless because holding him doesn't calm him down. He gets into a total state. The only thing that works is either complete distraction (lights on, toys out) or boob.
So now we are back where we were before where he is basically a newborn - up most of the night feeding, in our bed, or else yelling the whole house awake. It's really taking its toll and we are starting to get sick from the lack of sleep. I'm probably getting about 4 hours a night at best - my partner even less at night but then she is able to sleep a bit in the evening after bedtime. But it's really killing us now.
Other pertinent information: he still has no teeth and although he has had occasional teething like symptoms, the teeth have never come. This current issue isn't teething though I am sure because he doesn't have any of the other symptoms and it is consistent (ie. Every night).
Although he has no teeth he eats well (past week or so we have had real difficulty getting him into the high chair but that's a different problem) and has a wide and varied diet (although vegetarian). About the only thing he doesn't eat is lettuce or leaves of any kind (difficult with just gums).
He goes to nursery/daycare 4 days a week since his 1st birthday and has settled in really well, doesn't cry when left there anymore and is doing really well.
In all other aspects he is a happy healthy toddler and he walks really well and babbles and has a few words, so all as expected.
Tell us what to do - we are DESPERATE.