u/Responsible_Role_444

Baby will be 7 months old in a week. I’ve boobed him to sleep his whole life until maybe two months ago where I added a book between boob and sleep and it totally fixed his false starts.

Now I know boob needs to be before bath but I don’t know how to change this just cold turkey one day? He loves this bedtime feed so much and gets extremely excited in the bath because he loves water and is super high energy. Feels like it’ll be a mess.

I understand there’s no way to do this gradually… any advice?! Thank you.

Baby just turned 6 months old. Current schedule is averaging 2.25/2.5/2.5/2.75. Bedtime is around 8 pm and wakeup around 7 am. Nap total 2.5-3 hours a day.

Night:

LO was an incredible sleeper doing 7+ hour stretches every single night from 1.5 month old to 3.5 months old. Then regression hit and we rolled with the punches. Hourly wakes and false starts every night. Quite recently I realized that me breastfeeding him to sleep was causing issues (I know, I know haha...). I would breastfeed him to sleep and then rock for 20 min asleep before crib transfer or else he would wakeup. And then would need to settle him in crib or pickup at 30 min, 45 min, 60 mins until he was finally fully down.

False starts and frequent wakeup pretty much got fixed when I added books and a song between boob and sleep. I always sing the same song and rock him and he falls asleep immediately. I then started gradually decreasing time rocked. Went from 20 min to 10 min in a week and a half. I do the same amount of rocking for night wakes and transfers go fine. My goal is to get to zero. He now does 7-9 hour stretches pretty often so I consider this a success. Any advice welcome.

Naps:

Did carrier naps for a longgg time and now the naps are on me in the rocking chair. Sometimes I rock him to sleep but if he falls asleep on the boob I let him. I tried "Give baby a chance" at 3 months and it worked twice and then never again. Now I am currently attempting crib nap for each first nap of the day. I mimic bedtime and rock him asleep for 10 min then transfer. He sleeps comfortably but wakes up at 30 min on the dot. I try to settle in crib but it has never worked for naps. I then try to save the nap by breastfeeding him and sometimes it works sometimes not. I do other naps as contact to protect sleep.

Also, most of the time, to get him to nap more than 30 min even on me I had to breastfeed him at 30 min and pray that he falls back asleep. Most of the time I can get one 1.5 hour nap and two 30 min ones in a day.

Do I continue to gradually decrease rocking time for bedtime and first nap simultaneously and hope nap magically extends one day? Am I in a good direction? Can this work? My situation is not problematic enough for me to want to do things not gradually. I just want to help him learn as best as I can! THANK YOU!