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If nursing to sleep is working, it's always hard for me to understand why people are so eager to stop. I nursed my daughter to sleep until she was 28 months, then I was ready to wean, and we stopped without effort. You could probably just work to change the routine and not have to do CIO. As for the wakeups, 2 a night is developmentally normal at that age.

@Mrs.Someone: Except that if nursing to sleep is leading to nights with 2-4 wake-ups, then it's not really working... I think you may be dealing with a suck to sleep association (I read somewhere it's like going to sleep in your bed every night and then ending up on the lawn every morning...if he's sucking when he falls asleep, he expects to be sucking when he wakes.) I think you could work on this without CIO, but you need to separate nursing from bedtime by 20-ish minutes. Then gradually reduce the amount of help you give him. So, first maybe rock to sleep, then maybe patting in his crib, then a still hand on his back, etc, until you aren't assisting him.

Alexis doesn't say that babes have to be waking every sleep cycle for CIO. It does sound like your little guy might benefit if you want. But Alexis also says that if whatever you are doing is working for you, then awesome. You say it's not working for you, though, so CIO is one avenue to change it.

And yes, naps are pretty important when you're doing CIO. If you choose to do CIO, maybe try starting on a Saturday night when you've gotten him naps however you can (car/stroller/in arms/whatever). Do the same on Sunday, and you may be in good enough shape by Monday that daycare naps won't be such a big deal.

If you decided to CIO, I'd choose a time (at least 6 hours after bedtime) that you will not go in until. If he wakes before then, let him cry (with or without checks). If he wakes after then, go to him immediately. What you don't want to do is decide after an hour that he's hungry and go in.

@Mrs.Someone: Oh wow, I need more sleep. Sorry

@KBee: See above

@Kbee: based on what you wrote about naps, chances are that if you could fix / improve the daytime sleep then the nights would also improve! Can you work with your daycare provider to work on the naps?

And like @sarac: , I too nursed my big girl to sleep every night and what worked for us was bed sharing from when she woke up. Some kids just need more nighttime parenting! The other trick that has worked with both my kids was remaining in the room but not engaging with them while they settled to sleep.

For me, CIO was a lifesaver. We did it at 5 months because my son was waking up 4-6 times a night and had to be nursed back to sleep every time, and if he woke up while I was trying to transfer him from boob to crib we had to start the whole routine over. I agree that you definitely need to teach your son to fall asleep without nursing, but you may not need to do CIO yet? jess1483 had a great suggestion, I think, to separate nursing from bedtime. Is your son eating solid foods yet? We were told to do nursing, then "dinner" (solids), then bath/stories/bed. That helps establish a bedtime routine that you can carry on while they get older that isn't nursing dependent. The only thing is that it might not solve the problem, because you might just substitute nursing for some other sleep association - he'll wake up in the night and won't understand why you aren't still sitting beside the crib patting his back.

We used CIO with success at around 5 months, but our baby was actually waking pretty much every sleep cycle, so the training really only worked to get her to sleep through cycles on her own. She still woke up when she was hungry and at 7.5 months, she was definitely still up at least 1-2x per night to nurse. 2-4x sounds like the high end of normal but your baby could still just be hungry and needs to nurse more than once. Maybe ask your pediatrician? I remember asking and ours said something like at 6 months, they might still wake 2x per night to eat, at 9 months, 1x per night, and by 12 months they should sleep through.