I NEED TO VENT

My now 7 month old is having a hard time with nighttime sleep, at 4.5 months sleep trained, everything was great up until teeth started coming in at 6 months, the cry at night was different. I’m also attachment parenting which I don’t even know if sleep training and that can even exist together… Anyways during the time of teething I was giving him the boob and it turned into this awful waking every hour for the boob and some nights I was just too tired to even be able to comprehend that I was giving it to him.

Fast forward to present day, I am working on letting him fuss back to sleep when he wakes for the boob. It’s going ok. But recently he’s been waking up at freaking 5AM wanting to fall asleep on my boob after I had just dream fed him at 4AM sometimes even a little past 4AM… it’s DRAINING. It’s been like this for a few weeks now, constant changes in wake time, for example one day it was 4:40AM and I could not get him back to sleep 😵‍💫

Bed time I have to stand above his crib and soothe him now (only for 5min) bc FIO turns into CIO and i do give in after 25-30 min… it escalates to the point of bloody noses for my baby. Like at this point I don’t know how to get him to be an independent sleeper at nighttime anymore, I’m no longer carrying the confidence I once had in the beginning. Nap time is easy, put him down in crib walk out of room, baby is asleep.

I hope I’m not alone!!! Can yall give some solidarity and tell me it will be okay??? I’m so confused and I’m finding it extremely hard to follow my intuition with sleep, in fear of having my baby have poor sleep hygiene in the future. I’m putting lots of pressure on myself with his sleep and I just don’t know how to find a balance between control and flow.

- 7 months old
- 3/3.5/4
- DTW 6:00-6:30AM (now varying to 5AM)
- nap 1 30min-50min long
- nap 2 1hr-1.5hr long
- teething

Our bedtime routine has been as follows: go into the dark bedroom and we read with red lights on for about 20-25 min, we stay active and try to get a wind down going before putting baby into crib. Adjusting baby’s circadian rhythm is our main goal, as its still so bright out at his bed time…

The transfer to crib has been horrible it seems as though baby is getting drowsy before bed and I want to avoid that due to sleep training as we know drowsy but awake ≠ independent sleep. We have been sleep training since 4 months, DTW 6:30, 2.5/3/3.5 (which we are adjusting TOMORROW to 3/3/4) baby is teething and that has set us back quite a bit.

MY QUESTION: should we skip the dark bedroom 20 min before crib? Does having the baby in brightly lit home (due to natural light and many windows) before bed disrupt nighttime sleep??? I’m a first time parent and this is all new to me!