Ok, very long story short, over the past six months DS1, 2.5, has gone from going to sleep on his own in a crib to sleeping in our bed off and on, but more so than not. I feel like we have sort of just let it happen to try and get through a lot of big changes (move to new house/new room, DS2, who’s now 2 months). I never intended to cosleep with him and I want him in his own bed. Now that we are coming out of the newborn fog I’m ready to tackle this but I’m not sure how to go about indoing this huge habit we’ve created.

He has a full mattress on the floor in his room (started climbing out of crib) and right now if one of us stays in the room with him, he will eventually fall asleep with a fair amount of crying and asking to go to our room. The main problem is, he wakes up a couple hours later screaming absolute bloody murder. Like, he doesn’t wake up and cry, he wakes up and immediately starts these bloodcurdling screams. Then after that it’s eirher one of us has to lie down with him or bring him to our bed. We’ve had a lot of conversations about his room, his bed, how he sleeps in there and if he needs us he can just call for mommy or daddy, etc. But he seems genuinely upset to be in his own bed at bedtime and the shrieking at midnight is absolutely awful. Also he takes a while to fall asleep but if we try to leave before he’s asleep it’s a meltdown so it’s a time suck.

What are we doing wrong or right? Help!