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This probably sounds obvious, but I'm going to say it anyways - have you tried an 8:00 bedtime? For us, 7:30 gets "I'm not tired enough for bed yet" screams and 8:30 gets overtired screams, our magic window is right in the middle.

I would probably start being consistent and doing the same thing for naps that you are for nighttime. For me it took longer for it to work with naptime, but once it did, all of the work was well worth it and he became a much better napper!

What does your bedtime routine look like? Is it predictable? Maybe stop making the bottle the last thing, especially if he's falling asleep during it. Our pattern is bath (if he's getting one, we don't do a bath every night), bottle, pajamas, brush his teeth, read a book, and put him down to bed. We're at the point now (he's 15 months) where we can rush through the bedtime routine when needed and he doesn't mind, but for the first few months it had to be exactly the same thing every night.

It's great that you're having less wake-ups though, that is something to celebrate!

Oh! And I almost forgot to ask...does he have any sort of soother in the crib? I went out and bought one of those light-up aquarium style soothers that attaches to the crib when we started sleep training, and it made such a huge difference - instead of crying to calm himself he would just watch it in awe.

I know not everyone agrees with this, and I suppose the horse has bolted from the barn by now for you guys, but we started straight up with extinction. The one time we tried checks he got SO wound up when he saw either of us that it was like setting the reset button on his crying. So I'm wondering, if you proceed from now on without checks maybe the time will get less every night? It definitely has for us. But again I know no checks is not for everyone.
I'm nap training our son now and the crying is all over the place. Some naps he falls straight to sleep, others (like this afternoons) he cried for 30 minutes!! There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, except for his level of tiredness which I guess I'm terrible at reading.
Good luck - it freaking sucks listening to them cry. I try and tell myself (like a mantra) that we'll both end up happier at the end of it. I hope I'm right

Yeah, I would also suggest not doing the checks. Only because if you decide to go in after 10 minutes you are likely to guarantee you'll always have to go in after 10 minutes.

Also...what does your nap schedule look like?

@ScarletBegonia: We did extinction also. At that age he would get way more wound up if he saw me and I didn't pick him up.

When we sleep trained we didn't immediately see no crying to sleep. There was a good 2-3 weeks where he cried some amount of time (10-40 min). Sometimes if he was over tired, it was much harder to get him to sleep.

As far as routine, my LO has a serious nurse/eat to sleep association too. So we changed our routine so that we do bottle first, then bath, story, put in crib. Usually if he gets really tired and falls asleep he wake up when I start to bring him upstairs and undress him. If he's SUPER sleepy, we skip bath. Otherwise, he wakes up and we do bath time and the rest of the routine. I have noticed though, if he's falling asleep during the bottle, that means we've started too late.

Since he is refusing his third nap, maybe you could try starting the second nap a little later each day with the goal of getting him down for his afternoon nap at 2:30 or 3. This, along with pushing up bedtime a little bit (and again, maybe try moving it up incrementally instead of all at once) should get him out of the over-tired/over-stimulated zone and (hopefully!) decrease the crying.

Also, if he is falling asleep with nursing, I would flip the routine around. Since you have added steps on to the routine instead of changing it, he is still getting the same queue to go to sleep. Maybe try story, bath, PJs, nurse, song... or even nurse, bath, PJs, story.

@rolypoly: Definitely sounds like good progress! 29 minutes still sucks, I know. My son cried right through his nap yesterday, almost an hour I sat downstairs staring at the monitor crying right along with him....i felt terrible. I don't know if it was the right thing to do. This mom shit is so hard. I hope you start to see a reduction in the crying soon - but remember to trust your gut regardless! You always know best with your baby (I need to take that advice too).

@rolypoly: 29 min is a huge improvement over 45 min! The only thing I would suggest is to stick with the changes you've made. Every time you switch something up, it's as if you've started sleep training from day 1 again. So pretend this was day 1 and do the same thing tommorow and the day after, etc. Good luck!

@rolypoly: I didn't read the entire thread just your last post- when my lo dropped his third nap at 6 months we put him down for bed super early, like 6 pm. He adjusted and it went later slowly but during transition times like that, he did best going to bed way earlier than normal!

@rolypoly: though all our sleep training I've always nursed to sleep. My son would wake up (like clockwork - you could set your watch) 45 minutes after going to sleep. So when we let him cry with no checks, it was for that wakeup. We tried to be as consistent as possible with that, and with any wake ups that happened before 1 or 2 am. By some miracle, I can now put him down drowsy but awake at bedtime but much more importantly, for naps. It seems like the crying it out at the first wakeup taught him to put himself to sleep - and when we unswaddled it just started happening quicker and quicker. So I definitely would say you're doing the right thing - since it worked for us (for now, I know better than to think this happy sleep time will be permanent!)
So happy to hear your nights have been better! x