Baby has forgotten how to self settle - only at bedtime
We sleep trained our little boy about a month ago when he was 4 months old. It went really well - worked within a few days and for period of about 3 weeks we would lay him in his cot and he would put himself to sleep at night with little to no crying.
Then we needed to remove the arms-up swaddle - because he started rolling (5 months old). We went cold turkey.
First night was a lot of screaming but after 30 minutes he went to sleep. He woke up an hour later screaming and we rocked him and put him back to sleep. The next night 30 minutes screaming but no wakeups in the night - we thought great we’ve transitioned away from the swaddle.
But now we’re 8 days later and it seems like he’s forgotten how to settle himself to sleep for bedtimes only - crying for at least 30 minutes every night. If he sounds really upset (more than just protesting) we go in and calm him and put him back down. During the day he self settles smoothly for every nap with some whale tailing and throwing his head back and forth but almost no crying. At bedtime he is crying within 2 minutes of putting him in the cot.
His wake windows are 2/2.25/2.25/2.75
Wake-up is at 7am, and bedtime falls between 7-8 depending on naps which are normally 1hr ,1.5hr, 30min. He sleeps in his cot in his own room and has comfortably slept there for months.
We have tried making the last wake window shorter to 2.5hr, and longer to 3hr with no success.
We realised that maybe the bath 30 minutes before sleep was waking him up a bit, so we moved this to 45min before sleep to get some more calming down before bed.
Before this he was sleeping 11 hours through the night. Now he is waking just once after a 8-9hr stretch for a feed (seems genuinely hungry) which is fine.
What are we doing wrong? He knows how to put himself to sleep but just not for the least week? Or are we still facing the remnants of the sleep sack transition?