Hellobee Boards

That sounds like a really normal sleeping schedule for a 7 month old.

Personally in this situation I would "explain" to him that he's going to sleep in the crib from now on, and just tackle naps and night in the crib at the same time. I would also do CIO cold turkey - tell him you love him, give him a kiss, lay him down and walk away. Do not go back in, it only makes it harder. All will be forgiven and forgotten in the morning, and a well-rested baby is so much happier!!

I wouldn't do CIO for night wakings yet, though. If he wakes up 45 minutes after you lay him down, he doesn't need to eat yet. But in the MOTN if he is up and wants to eat, I'd feed him. Once he's sleep trained in the crib and you can lay him down for bedtime, I would bet money that he will only be up once a night to eat. But I could never do CIO in the middle of the night - just bedtime, and that was hard but so so worth it both times!

The waking up 45 minutes after putting him down for the night sounds like a classic sleep association problem (Ferber has a great section on this in "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" -- highly recommend reading that book). Because he is nursing to sleep, when he reaches the end of a sleep cycle (~45 minutes) and naturally wakes up, he isn't able to string another one together on his own. If you can break the nurse to sleep association, this problem should resolve. The easiest way to do it is to start by moving nursing up in the bedtime routine -- so you might do something like bath, nurse, then some other activity to wake him up slightly (sing a song, turn on white noise, etc) before putting down so that he's not nursing all the way to sleep.

If you're comfortable with a little crying, you could try the Ferber progressive waiting method, where you leave him for a minute, if he's still crying, come back and soothe, then increase the interval to 3 minutes, etc. We did this with my son at the 4-month mark and it worked within a few days; within two weeks he was down to one MOTN feeding, which he kept until around 7 months. If you're uncomfortable with any CIO, you could also try to "trade down" sleep associations from nursing to something like white noise/a song, a lovey, or a pacifier.

ETA: I would start with just the falling asleep on his own at the beginning of the night. Once he can do that, he should drop some (if not all) of the night feedings pretty quickly!

I definitely recommend reading Ferber and I also found this site to be really helpful for all things sleep: https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/. Good luck!

@Purpledaisy: just want to say this sounds super tough, even if it's normal! I think my son would have been like that at 7 mo if cosleeping hadn't worked so well for us. Of course that came with its own issues. I wonder if you could focus on bedtime first and see how you can help him start to fall asleep without nursing. I am not a cry it out person, but you could try it if you are. What I would do in your shoes is do whatever it takes to get great naps for a day or two, hold him, whatever, and start tackling bedtime. If you are up to it, skim or read the no cry sleep solution and see if you can get him to start falling asleep without nursing. It's a gradual process. She has something called the pantly pull off. It may help enough with the rest of the night if you can get him sleeping without the nipple! I replaced nursing with rocking at first and then felt I could gradually phase rocking out. Anyways my advice is all over the place but good luck! And sleepy vibes!

DS was just like this at 7m. One night we put him down and 20 minutes later he was screaming and we just let him CIO. He had to figure out how to connect his sleep cycles without us. After a few nights his sleep got better and better and he started dropping wake ups too.