18 month old won't sleep if not in our arms!

[blissfullyignorantorinpain]

Hi everyone. I'm currently losing my mind. My son is 18 months old and has been rocked to sleep all his life. Now he's getting bigger me and my husband just can't physically do it anymore. Sometimes we could be sat rocking him for 2+ hours.
I always thought he'd grow out of it and he hasn't. We don't know what to do. We do bedtime routine song everything. Have done for a long time. If we let him cry we know he just won't stop and we're obviously scared of doing the cry it out for that reason.
Any advice or tips would be gratefully received.

Bump

It’s not like he is 6 years old. He’s only 18 months and rocking him to sleep is an inconvenience to you rather than something that’s harmful to your son. It’s not worthwhile losing your mind over it. You can rock your son by holding his head/upper body and letting his legs rest on the bed, you don’t have to hold him all.

Sounds tough! It’s hard to know what to suggest but the fact that you’re rocking for 2+ hours suggests to me it’s not actually helping him settle that much anyway. It reminds me of when I would sit with my DS while he went to sleep, it would take 45 minutes and he would be standing up all the time.

Once I tried leaving him to settle on his own (returning if he sounded upset) he settled much faster - I think he was staying awake because I was there and he wanted to play.

In terms of crying, if he is crying in a sort of whingy or winding down way I leave him. If he sounds genuinely upset I go in and pat him, stroke his face, pat his bum, whatever.

You write that if you let him cry he won’t stop but my experience is that’s not true. I wouldn’t leave an upset baby to cry for more than seconds, but the whingy or winding down cry leads to sleep very quickly.