hope some of you can help.
Ds is nearly 18 ms, not yet walking but coasting. up until about july, he would happily be put in his cot awake and would settle to sleep in minutes. Then he had a bout of illness, just a cold, which had him waking in the night - he also at the same time realised he could pull himself to standing in his cot. Since then, if i put him in his cot awake, he gets hysterical and stands up. So we got stuck into the trap of allowing him to fall asleep on me (only took 10 minutes) then transferring him into the cot. Fine, but then of course when he woke in the night, naturally he must have thought "how the hell did i get here?" so would not get himself back to sleep but stand up and scream. I realise we have now made a rod for our own backs - he has lost the ability to get himself to sleep, and we haven't managed to re-establish this and have gone for the easy way, also we have a 5 yr old DD.
we are now in the situation of when he wakes in the night, i take him into our bed, it is a quick fix solution, he is back to sleep in 2 minutes, but then i am on edge, so is DH and we just can't sleep ourselves with DS in the bed with us. He used to sleep straight through, but awoke at 5/5.30 when i brought him into our bed - was this our first wrong move??
He had another cold over the weekend (the first since july - not bad really!) and it has got worse. it's like he's realised that if he wakes and shouts, he will be taken to where he likes it best - with us, not in his cot, which he seemingly hates. he is now waking at midnight every night, and we are trapped in the cycle of bringing him on to ours (i have tried to settle him myself on my knee then putting him back in his cot - immediately wakes, back to square one) to get him into a deep sleep then trying to put him back, which is a 50/50 operation.
we are exhausted, and i know that i have conciously avoided any form of CC as i admit i find it very hard to do,very hard to listen to and hard to watch. ironically we did do it with DD, the "pick up put down" method, going in every few minutes checking she was ok, after 2 or 3 nights it was fine, she got the message and has generally always slept well. But i find the idea very hard to even contemplate with DS, don't ask me why, i think i have gone soft with my second! In truth i had PND with DD, and maybe my bond wasn't as strong so maybe that's why i was able to be hard and controlled in myself enough to do the "pick up put down" method. But this state of play cannot continue, the bottom line is that we aren't comfortable sharing our bed with him, he is a big 18mth boy, he thrashes about, we don't sleep well at all and we need to function well as parents and at work as well, so we need to find a way of getting him back into his cot, getting himself to sleep.
sorry to go on, what can you all advise me?
