Is there anything we can do about his night wakings if we've already sleep trained him? He's 17 months
He's always been a fair to middling sleeper I would say. We did controlled crying at 7 months because I was having to rock/jiggle him to sleep at night and for 3 naps a day (as well as any night wake ups) and suddenly realised I was doing that for about 4 hours a day and my back was at breaking point! We'd tried all the gentle methods first.
He responded really well to CC - the classic 3 days - and I still BF him at night but he would go straight back to sleep after rather than needing more jiggling for hours. I stopped BF at night at about 10/11 months and again he responded really well and started sleeping through the night. So far so good.
Then when he turned one he had months of illness and teething - the canines were the worst - absolutely horrible. He would sometimes cry for 3 hours solid at night - of course when he's ill or teething we comfort him - in fact we've never really had to do CC again after those first few days.
My understanding of CC was that it's to teach them to self settle? Well, he can do that - when we put him down at night he goes straight to sleep - he might sometimes grizzle for a few minutes first but it's very rare.
So now he's not sick or teething any more - soI don't think he NEEDS comfort - I just think he's used to it - what do we do about night wakings?
We got into the habit of lying with him on the futon in his room until he fell asleep again during this period of not being well but I just can't do it any more. I'm 7 months pregnant and can't lie on my back for ages at night to comfort him and also find it really hard to get him off the bed again and into his cot without waking him due to having to heave myself off the bed!
He can sometimes take up to an hour to go back to sleep during which time he tosses, turns, asks for water, blows raspberries on my belly, talks to himself etc - he doesn't seem distressed but if we try and leave him in his cot or put him back in before he's asleep again he kicks off.
I really need to resolve this problem before baby number two arrives! Also the thought of the next 6 weeks of work on little to no sleep as well as a big exam and a house renovation going on has got me quite frankly at my tether's end.
Do we need to do a form of CC just for night wakings again? We did actually sort of try but it didn't seem to work like it did the first time.
If you've made it to the end of this - please have some sort of medal/prize and any advice will be gratefully received!!!