Sleep training advice

[CareerWomanWithaBaby]

I’m a ftm to a 9 month old little boy. He’s never slept through the night and co sleeps the majority of the time (I put him in a crib as much as possible but it doesn’t last). He still wakes every few hours to feed and will have partial bottles and sometimes up to 3 bottles in the night but in 2-3 sittings each. I’m feeling pressure from my partner to get him into his own nursery and cot but just know how much time I’m spending awake feeding and settling him in the night.
I’m wondering if anyone has any advice on how to successfully transfer a baby who feeds a lot in the night, and is used to co sleeping, into their own room?

No advice around sleep training as I couldn’t bare to do it. I think there’s a big expectation that babies should be sleeping through the night at this age but we forget that it’s biologically normal to wake through the night and it’s a protective thing. I think society makes you feel like your baby should sleep through by xyz but sleep is such a difficult thing to master and every baby is different.

Sorry I know that’s not what you want to hear but I’m in a similar boat as my 1 year old still wakes between 1 and 3 times a night. The only thing that’s helped me is getting my husband to help settle her, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. When he’s able to settle her she tends to do longer stretches as she isn’t expecting to be fed.

How is your little boy with water? Our health visitor suggested trying to get my husband to settle and offer water and eventually she should wake less. She was fuming about being offered water so it didn’t work for us!

In terms of transferring to own room, we did this around 7 months as we realised we might be waking her up and she did initially sleep much better (then teething / learning to crawl etc messed up her sleep again) - a few other friends have found moving to own room helped a lot with wakings. We did it gradually by first moving the first nap of the day to in there (apparently the first nap is the easiest to start with - something to do with more sleep pressure) and went from there.

Good luck and hope he sleeps better for you soon! Also sorry that sleep is so hard, I’m with you in solidarity on that!

My advice is to aim for the most sleep for you and your baby, to accept his completely normal infant behaviour, trust your instincts to care for him and have him close to you where he’s happy and feels safe and tell your partner that while you’re the one dealing with nights you’ll do what suits you and DS best. What do you mean by feeling pressure?

FWIW neither of mine was in their own room till after 2, they were fed, picked up, comforted, cosseted, sung to as much as they liked, we bed shared, sometimes still do, and neither DH nor I would have done a thing differently.

We live in a sleep training obsessed society here while most of the world doesn’t even know what it means. Human babies want to be near their mums and wake and feed at night as during the day. You’re doing exactly what your son needs, it won’t last forever, he’s normal, you’re great.