Thank you for this. After reading the article I did feel a bit like a failure for struggling with putting to bed my nearly 4 years and 14 months old. My youngest finds sleep a lot easier than my oldest, but still at 14 months he wakes every 2 hours to nurse. With teething, colds from his older sister and beginning to walk, sleeping through the night seems out of the question for the coming months.

My baby had had issues with allergy, kidney reflux, Gerd… Until 14 months she did not want to be hugged by me and would physically push me away when I tried. Since then we have developed the kind of physically loving and nurturing relationship that I had always imagined, and that you describe above. When you have a baby who is in a lot of distress and nothing you do soothes her for more than a few seconds at a time, and your husband has to take her out for a 2 hour min walk every evening as it’s the only way to get her to sleep for longer than 20min stretches and you’re up for 3 hour stints more than once a night every night and your baby is inconsolable, the process you describe above sounds like something out of a fairy tale.

People who have babies that sleep always associate their success with something they have done as parents. I’m not saying that is wholly false, but I think a lot of sleep independence / what parents call “sleep success” is down to the baby and not necessarily how gentle, responsive, patient, loving, thoughtful, affectionate etc the parent is because my husband and I are great examples of this but it made no difference whatsoever.

For the first about 3month of his life he wasn’t a great mapper, but at night would be happy to lieben his bed and play and relax until falling asleep. I always knew it wouldn’t stay like that, but I didn’t realise how bad it would get. Since turning 5month old every nap is super short and a 2+ hour fight involving every idea of how babies could fall asleep including leaving foe a minute to cry, pram, car, carrier, bouncing rocking. Dancing. Shushing, feeding, rocking, high stimulation. Low stimulation, dummy, comforter and the list goes on.
We are both exhausted. I’m angry and snappy. My toddler hasn’t seen me in over a week (unless it’s pacing the Baby up and down the house).

Im at my end. I just let him cry for a good 10min and it just exxelated and is against everything I believe in.

I need help. 🙁

K,
I don’t have much advice, just solidarity momma! You described our experience with my baby girl exactly! Up until 5-ish months, I couldn’t read her cues. She was unpredictable and fought sleep like a champ and her scream/cry was a force to be reckoned with. It was exhausting, and I frequently felt like I was failing as a parent. But let me tell you, IT GOT BETTER! At almost 7 months, she takes 3 fairly good naps around the same time each day. She still sometimes has bad nights, but typically only wakes 2-3 times to nurse now and sleeps 830-830. I finally started nursing her to sleep for naps instead of trying to lay her down drowsy, and it worked so much better for us. We also moved bath time up earlier, and skip the fussy bedtime routine. But every baby/parent is different, I hope you find what works for you and your baby and it gets better soon!