Where to start with sleep training

[LBTM]

Hi. I'm at a loss where to start with sleep training for my 8month DS. I really don't want to leave him to cry on his own and would rather gradual steps but I'm at the point where I really need more sleep.

He typically goes to bed 7.30-8 and I feed him them put him into his sleeping bag and into his cot a little bit awake and then sing/pat him to sleep. Sometimes he can settle with very little input from me but screams the place down and stands up in his cot if I leave the room before he is asleep (that's not a problem in itself, I just know he might sleep better if I could get to the point where he goes to sleep totally by himself).
He'll usually wake at about 10.30 and I feed then put him back in his cot. He wakes again at about 12.30 and I take him into my bed to co-sleep. If I put him back into his cot at this point he wakes up every 15 mins. He then wakes at about 3 and is often pretty restless, feeding frequently until he's up for the day at about 6.

Ideally I'd like him to stay in his cot and only wake for a feed once. He's doing well with solids and gets plenty of breastmilk in the day.

Options I've considered are:

1. semi-night-weaning - I could stick with the 10.30 feed then have a few rotten nights of only feeding once, maybe at about 2am and hope that he gets used to it and sleeps until then. I worry that there's no point doing this before he can self-settle better.
2. stopping co-sleeping - I could have a few rotten nights of resettling over and over again. I don't really mind co-sleeping except for all the restlessness from 3am so stopping co-sleeping might not help.
3. Really push the self-soothing at bedtime for a few days - feed before nappy and PJs so he's fully asleep -and accept lots of crying while I reduce how much I pat and sing.
4. Do something about his daytime nap schedule in the hope that it stops the restlessness. He generally naps 3 times, usually in his cot with feeding until almost asleep - 30 mins at about 9, about 1hr at 12 and about 30 mins at about 4. I don't wake him up and find it almost impossible to make naps longer than this. He sometimes misses the later nap and goes to bed at 7ish but he's generally more restless on those nights

Any suggestions or thoughts? I have so little energy to do anything that means less sleep in the short term unless I'm confident it will give benefits fairly quickly. He's currently in our room and we don't have much choice about that until he sleeps better as he will be sharing with our older DS.

Do you have a partner? We started with night weaning.... If dad resettles at night for a few days rather than mum it's so much easier as they know milk not an option. I found I needed to be comfortable that baby was not hungry at night before I could move forward with the rest of sleep training.

I do. That sounds like a good plan. I was getting trapped in a circle, worried that night weaning before he could self settle might just mean lots of time awake at night but worried that he would be up hungry if I tried more sleep training!

Yes. Mine could be settled by rocking so dad had a bad couple of nights rocking him back to sleep at night time wake ups, but then I was comfortable that physiologically he didn't need the milk at night- I definitely needed that before moving forward. Not sure if yours has a dummy but we also took that away at that point.
We sleep trained at 6 months and went from waking up every 2 hours to sleeping through. Took about a week. Totally worth it!

Thanks for the reassurance that we can do things that we improve the situation!

I'm having the exact issue with my 11month old. @orangesky1 great to see that you sleep trained successfully, would love to know what approach you took? Did taking away the soother help with sleeping through? Tried to let DS cry it out last night but he and I were both so distressed I eventually gave in and put him in the bed. But I has to stop!

I did controlled crying or whatever it’s called, with my 5.5mo. Basically I fed him with the light on etc, put him down, kissed and left — - and returned at 3, 5, 8, 10min intervals. Within 3ish days he was putting himself to sleep at nap and bedtime and I was saving literally hours a day. Have a look at the “support for lockdown sleep training” thread that I started months ago, you’ll get a sense of how we all got on.

Recently baby (now almost 9mo) was waking regularly and I was debating some form of night weaning. I left him with a relative for a day as I had to go out, he refused any milk from 10am-6pm (!) and weirdly since then has slept 12hs with one wake up every other night.

I’d prioritise solids to fill him up, hoik up your big girl pants and let baby cry a little and learn to self-soothe (mine loves chewing on a muslin as he drops off) and let your partner go up with water at night... Good luck!

Right, I'm ready to give it a try. Just need to wait for DH to recover from his man flu.

@Goostacean I remember your thread and sort of lurked on it at the time, thinking I might try CC when my DD was a little older. It was really useful to see the progress you were all making, so thanks for that! In the end I didn’t need to do CC but have done a bit of ‘crying down’. I remember you writing that your DS would still wake for feeds pretty regularly through the night in spite of learning to self settle, which is my situation now. Good to hear the wake ups are starting to reduce naturally. That’s sort of what I’m hoping for too, otherwise I’ll be night weaning soon as well.

@LBTM good luck with it. I’d love to know how you get on with night weaning. Please come back and update! If you’re not sure about controlled crying (no judgment here, at all!!) the crying down method was slightly gentler. Basically my DD has a grumpy/tired/frustrated cry and it’s different from being upset or needing me. There’s no tears and she just sounds tired and cross. I imagine that she is basically lying in her cot yelling, “I AM SO TIRED AND I NEED TO LET YOU KNOOOW!!” 🤣

So if she’s just grumpy and the cry is deescalating (crying down) I leave her to see if she will settle. Most of the time, she just stops after a couple of minutes and wriggles about a bit and goes off to sleep. She only really does that now if she’s very tired before sleep, though. Most of the time she settles happily after having a chat to herself. However, I go straight in if she sounds upset (crying up) and soothe her in the cot, and then leave again when she’s calmed down - then repeat as needed. It’s now very rare she doesn’t just settle on her own at the start of a nap/bedtime.