My son is 12 weeks old today. His sleeping habits are driving me crazy, and in many ways I have myself to blame.

We started out with him sleeping in a Moses basket in our bedroom. After 4 weeks, my husband was exhausted and had to function at work so I agreed to transition the baby into his bedroom. When he was in our room, he would sleep anywhere from 2-3 hours, sometimes 4 in a row, wake up, eat (I EBF) and then go back to sleep. Putting him back in his own bed was not usually a big deal. He’d keep sleeping.

Then, we moved him into his room. He started waking more frequently. Every 1.5-3 hours. I was getting up with him, feeding him and putting him back to bed, but it was taking longer for him to go back to sleep, and getting up and out of bed was exhasuting me. By the time he was 6 weeks old, I couldn’t stay awake with him. We have a single bed in his nursery, and so I started nursing him and then falling asleep with him – safely though, so please don’t give me a hard time about bed sharing. But the more he got used to joining me for sleep in the night, the more he got used to it. We had a phase around 8-9 weeks where as soon as I would lay him (sleeping) in his bed, he would wake up crying.

I have been better at sleeping with him less, only maybe taking him into bed with me around 4 am on the weekends, and the odd night drifting off with him for an hour or two, but he is not sleeping long periods at a time and at 3 months I think he should be. Now he only sleeps 45 min to 2 hours at a time, 3 hours if I’m lucky. Last night, I insisted to my husband that we let him back in our bedroom because his nights wee better then. Well, he went to sleep for about half an hour in his own bed and then woke up. I decided to feed him just so he’d doze off again, but I ended up falling asleep with him until 3 am. So again, he slept with me most of the night.

I blame myself for the lack of consistency. Poor baby, no wonder he’s upset, sometimes I take him into bed with me and sometimes I don’t. So it is partly my fault. But I am desperate. I want him to sleep through the night, whether in his room or ours. And by sleep through the night, I just mean 5-6 hours in a row most nights. That would be great.

My pediatrician says he is old enough to just cry it out, but I just don’t know if that is what I want to do. I don’t feel right about it, but I am open to trying things. What has worked for you and your baby? Any stories about transitioning a bed sharing baby to their own bed around this age? Any success stories about CIO or other sleep training strategies that worked at 3 months?

I recently started a routine of bath, pajamas, sleep sack, nurse and put to bed sleeping. But sometimes he wakes up after only 20 min!