Hello,
My LO is 15 months old and has troubles falling asleep on his own.
By way of background, we never formally sleep trained him. He was able to sleep through the night since he was 3 months old with a pacifier. We pulled out the pacifier when he was 11 months old and after several nights of crying in our arms, he was able to fall asleep without it. Generally, before I pulled out the pacifier, he was able to put himself to sleep fairly quickly (within 15 minutes).
He generally sleeps 11 to 12 hours at night and takes 2 naps during the day (at 10am and 2pm) with each nap lasting on average 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes.
We have never been proponents of letting him cry it out. We have always used shush-pat and/or pick up/put down.
Lately, he has been sleeping later in the evening around 9pm after an hour or more of us trying to wind him down and soothe him to sleep. He seems very tired at 7:30pm and we start our bedtime routine then, but every time we put him in the crib, he screams. We have to either walk and rock him to sleep or give him an object (like a cell phone or cordless phone) to fixate on for 20 minutes before he falls asleep. There is always a lot of crying involved and because we try to avoid letting him cry too much, we are always attending to him and staying by his side until he falls asleep. He also wakes up at the same time (7:30am ish) so he seems very tired.
What am I doing wrong and how do I get him to sleep on his own? Is this a sleep regression or is this because perhaps he has been constantly sick with a cold (due to daycare) so he needs more comfort from us?
Thanks in advance!
