Sleep training a clingy baby?!

[Alexandraoko]

My LO is now 8 months old, I’ve managed to slowly wean him off feeding to sleep and now I rock him to sleep then put him down for naps and bedtime then feed to sleep overnight. He wakes up 4-5 times overnight and comes into bed with me on the 2nd wake up. Naps are usually about 30 minutes never longer than 45! Since he’s dropped his 3rd nap he’s now only having a total of 1 hour of daytime sleep, so I’m worried he’s not getting nearly enough sleep! Ive tried putting him down “drowsy but awake” and as soon as he touches the mattress he screams and then won’t stop crying until I’ve held him and rocked him for about 15minutes to calm him down when he just falls asleep with exhaustion. I’ve tried PUPD but I can’t get him calm enough to put him down after the first pick up! Any advice on how to sleep train when I can’t even put him in the cot without him being hysterical?! Do I need to sleep train or will he just eventually get it on his own?! I’m so torn in what to do because I don’t want to cause him sleep problems as he grows up if he’s using rocking as a crutch.

I get this. It's hard getting up that much.
We did gradual retreat until DS was going to sleep with just a hand on his back and then controlled crying.
We were rocking him to sleep after stopping bf to sleep. Then we put him down in his cot and 'jiggled' him to sleep for 3 nights. Then patted him to sleep for a few nights. Then just the hand on his back to sleep a few nights.
Then we did CC and went in 1,2,4,8 mins etc. Because he was now used to going to sleep lying in his cot he only cried for 15 mins. Was expecting a lot worse tho he did the same twice in the night. After 2 nights he we down happily, and still does.
I think if u go from cuddling/rocking to sleep to leaving baby in bed alone its too much of a leap and they will cry for hours.
He did cry when we did gradual retreat toobut it was all so worth it.and his naps improved too.
I would just do it for bed time and not naps as it is too much at first. DS was 12 months when we did that and it was the first night of more than 3 hrs sleep in a year after the 3rd day.
Be brave x

To by-pass the issue of needing to sleep train, but as a way to increase daytime sleep, how about naps in something that moves?

If he still fits in a bouncy chair then that would be ideal. If not a pram, inside that you push back and forth over and over. The idea is to extend his naps by continuing the movement through the end of one sleep cycle so that you lull him back into a second sleep cycle.

Why did you drop the 3rd nap? If naps are still short I'd suggest keeping them frequent with less awake time between naps.

FATEdestiny-
We do pram naps when I go out and he’ll sleep for about 40 minutes and up to an hour on occasion! Happy to have pram naps but can’t get the pram into the house as live up stairs so it resides in the boot of my car! Dropped the third nap because his awake times were getting so long the last nap of the day was 6pm and kept pushing bedtime to almost 10pm!! So two naps and an earlier bedtime work for him at the moment, wished we could have kept the 3 though because then I wasn’t so worried about him not getting enough sleep. I’m happy for him to sleep on me to extend naps but I go back to work in 2 months and I’ll be working 12 hour shifts and nights too so keen to try and sort out something with his sleeping before then. I just don’t know where to even start! I’ve been waiting for his sleep to get better naturally but now back to work is getting closer I’m starting to panic!

Clareypoo- Thank you! That’s really helpful. I didn’t like that CC would go down very well with him. Will give gradual retreat a go crossing fingers Would your baby just cry during gradual retreat or did the jiggles soothe her enough to stop from crying? I’ve tried stroking his face but it just seems to make him mad 😂

Sorry for the essays! 🙈

I'll not lie- yes he did cry but like you we couldn't carry on as we were. DP had to do much of the gradual retreat as he was more clingy with me, maybe because I breastfed.
We sang to him too, that helped. Just spoke to DP and she said that she kind of wiggled his bum when he was lying on his front to mimic rocking and gradually did it less and less over a few nights then started patting his bum.