Hi,
Our little one is 17 month and we started sleep training about 10 days ago. My wife’s put in the really hard work and she’s done an amazing job as we were having to feed him to sleep previously, then he was waking up hungry/wanting a bottle to sooth and waking up wet as a result. Now he’s sleeping through really well and when he does wake up he’ll whinge on and off for 45 minutes and put himself back to sleep. I’m so, so proud of what my wife’s achieve with him, they’ve both been incredible.
However, the only thing that’s a struggle is that it can take up to an hour from putting him into his cot until he’s asleep. We bath him at 6, usually into his sleep bag and having a bottle while having a story by 6:20 before being in his cot at 6:30.
No matter how drowsy he is, as soon as we put him into his cot he just goes wild. A lot of crying, climbing, standing up, throwing himself around. After a while we’ll get him to stay laid down while we stroke, rub, massage and shush him. Few times he’ll almost get there and then he can’t seem to switch his brain off and it starts again.
There’s probably a bit of sleep regression going on, but does this sound pretty typical or is there something else we should consider trying so he’s happier going into his cot?
We tried the cry it out method but I think it’s a bit late for him plus my wife just found it too upsetting.
Any experiences or suggestions would be greatly appreciated to make him feel happier about being in his cot without him making it look like he’s having a WWE wrestling match in there!