Sleep training doesn’t work

[Lalalul]

I’ve been consistent with my resettling method for 6 weeks with my now 7.5 month old. Despite this the best night we’ve had still involves 2x wake-up’s with longest stretch of sleep from baby of 6.5 hours.. on average though he gives 2-4 hour stretches. Resettling method is to sit with him and calm him in his cot with my voice reassuring him. I feed on his first wake up after 10pm (if he makes it that long). Paid a sleep consultant to ensure I did not deviate from the plan. It doesn’t work. My baby has always been an inconsistent sleeper, some fairly ok nights (2 wake ups), some awful nights (hourly wake ups). We are both still as exhausted as we were before we started. I’m writing this on wake up 2 of the night, 45 minutes into settling. It’s 2am. Some nights it may only take 10 mins and we have a ‘good night’. He self settles without fuss for all naps and bedtime, gets roughly 2.5-3 hours of daytime naps. Not sure the point of this post, maybe looking for some solidarity from others in the same camp, or offering the same to someone googling at 2am. It’s really hard when all the other mums from NCT are seeing sleep training success or have babies that seem to sleep without any sleep training. Is there something underlying wrong with my baby and I’m awful for even trying to support him to sleep without picking him up, or maybe ST just doesn’t work for some babies, and mine is one of the few it doesn’t work for. Rambles of a tired FTM over.

I hear you! I firmly believe they have to be ready developmentally. My first child could not fall sleep independently until he was closer to 15-16 months, no matter what i did. Tried all the resettling techniques in the book, for weeks on end and nothing worked. He just wasn’t ready for them. My second child was able to fall asleep independently at around 7-8 weeks. The 4 month sleep regression (which I never believed in until now!) put a stop to that hence why I’m awake now! 😵‍💫😂 but honestly it’s all developmental and what each individual is ready for. Yes, there are good habits you can get them in to, but until they’re ready it’s bloody hard. If you don’t feel it’s working for you, change it and you can always come back to it later when you’re ready.

Thanks @Upsetorjustpregnant that is reassuring. He can fall asleep independently, he just can’t seem to stay asleep! He will do some good nights of 4/5 hour chunks, then the next night I get 1-2 hour blocks. After spending an hour settling him when I wrote this post, he slept for 1hr 10 min. It didn’t seem worth it! The question is what to change it too as unless I pick him up and put him on the boob, if he’s upset it will take an hour or so for each overnight wake. I get longer stretches if I give him a comfort suck but fear that this is why he is waking (because the internet tells me it’s a bad habit)