What if we do nothing?

[Daybydaybyday]

Our seven month old feeds to sleep and wakes through the night. His sleep has never been brilliant. At best at one point pre a four month sleep regression he slept for one long stretch of 4-5 hours at night before waking every two hours roughly. He’s going through a particularly bad patch at the moment where he wakes nearly every sleep cycle when napping or overnight, unless we co-sleep. He may be teething plus he’s babbling a lot more and beginning to move around more.

He usually goes to sleep between 8pm-9pm which is perhaps quite a late bedtime but feels like when he is ready for sleep. He’s moved in the last month from 4 to 3 naps. He started solids at six months.

I am working part-time and work some evenings. If I am working he will sometimes only have 2 naps because my husband struggles to get him to sleep. He feeds to sleep for naps and bedtime unless he’s in his pram or the car.

I have thought that things will work out by themselves in time and that he will sleep when he’s ready. I’d be interested to know if anyone has just allowed sleep to work itself out and when things began to resolve if so?
Or do we need to make some changes to gently introduce sleep training?

He’s cot is also still in our room so I can more easily co-sleep in our bigger bed should he not settle - and my husband is in his room which has a spare single bed (My husband is exceptional and partners in everything else to care for him but just can’t get him to sleep)

There's another big sleep regression at 8-10 mo

You don't need to introduce any change if the current system works for you. We never did but DS has now stopped feeding to sleep and goes to sleep in his cot (eventually) at 14 mo. This is needing less and less help from us although one of us still stays with him. He still wakes several times but can sometimes* be just shushed or patted back off and often does a 4+ hour stretch, a short feed then the same again.

Oh and isn't particularly an early riser- 7:15 this morning was 'early'

He's 14.5 mo and I'd say it started to improve around his birthday . No sleep training and we won't ever.

Yes it can work itself out. My youngest had a sleep regression at about 4months and I just brought her into my bed so that she could feed when she wanted and I didn't even have to be awake - it worked much better for us than me waking and trying to sit up and feed her and resettle her every 1.5 hours! I can't remember when she started sleeping through, or whether I had to do anything to bring that about - which makes me think it was probably a natural and easy process. She's nearly 6 now and has been doing fine in her own bed for years.

I've just went with my DD. Sometimes, like you've found, her sleep has been shocking but now at 18 months it's better but still not perfect. I breast fed for bed time up until she was a year then introduced a bottle of cows milk to allow dad to help out. I've never been great at expressing.

I was lucky that she took to it well. She's teething at the minute so sleep isn't too great but generally she sleeps thru from 7/8pm till 4/5 then I bring her in with me till she gets up around 7ish. I still breast feed thru the night even though she doesn't feed at night or through the day anymore. I'll be honest and admit that that's for the extra sleep. I'll need to think about night weaning soon. Like you, I toyed with the idea of sleep training at various points, but ultimately I couldn't face the thought of it at any point so I didn't.

I think getting her off the breast at night is going to involve some training and she's still rocked/cuddled to sleep so that needs work too.

I'd say around 17/18 months was when things started to change for us.

He sounds similar to my DD at that age, although she was down to one nap by then. I fed her to sleep for naps and bedtime. When she was about 1 we moved away feeding her to sleep at night, but i still fed her to sleep for a nap. She didn't seem to mind not being fed to sleep at night, as long as one of us stayed with her till she fell asleep. She was still up several times a night. Just before she was two I decided i couldn't take the interrupted sleep anymore, and it didn't seem like it was going to resolve ever! So we kind of sleep trained her... Instead of me feeding her back to sleep when she woke, dh cuddled her back to sleep. It was two nights of hell, then on the third night she slept through! I was still feeding her to sleep for naps at this point. When she was about 27 months my milk dried up due to pregnancy, so i stopped feeding her... and she never napped again but she does sleep at night brilliantly now at almost 3.

Thanks for your replies and advice. Sounds like we have a long road ahead but it’s helpful to know things should eventually begin to work out, even if they take a while.