Need advice for gentle sleep training
Hi all, LO is 12.5 months old. She previously slept through the night, but the past few months have been pretty hit and miss - weeks of terrible split nights and weeks that have been better.
Because of the spate of split nights we had, we got into the habit of cuddling to sleep and transferring. We’ve spent the last month or so breaking this habit and now she goes to sleep in her cot with us present and shushing (we only pat now if she starts to escalate). For a week or so, she was sleeping through the night again, but now she is having 1 - 3 wakes per night. Most of the time she resettles fairly quickly with some shushing, and occasionally she puts herself back to sleep. We still have the odd night where she’s really unsettled and won’t go back to sleep easily.
In terms of her sleep schedule, she usually wakes around 6am (although we’ve recently had some early wakes), and is on two naps. The day can vary between 3/3.5/4 or 3.25/3.75/4.25 - we’re not strict with wake windows and follow her cues. Total day sleep is in the range of 2 - 2.5 hours and bedtime is currently around 7:30 - 8pm.
I’m hoping that she just needs to learn to fall asleep independently to reduce the night wakes, but unfortunately CIO or Ferber aren’t an option. She escalates to the point of making herself throw up and that’s not something we can cope with. I’m also not sure if a schedule tweak would help. Any advice on how to gently train her to fall asleep independently or for her schedule would be amazing.