My LO is 16 months old. He has never slept through the night.

He goes to sleep at 8:30pm and wakes up at 6am. This just seems to work for him. He has one nap in the day around late morning/lunchtime.

During his nighttime sleep he still wakes up

Approx every 3 hours for a breastfeed.

He will wake between 11-12 then 2-3 and then he will be on and off awake between 3-6. Then we get up at 6am to start our day and for me to go to work etc.

I know he doesn’t need milk through the night anymore. But this is the only way he has ever gone to sleep... with milk.

Here’s our obstacles....

We only have one room so his cot is right next to me- no other space to move it to and no other rooms for us to sleep in.

We CANNOT and WILL NOT do cry it out. Our boy can climb anything. He can climb out of cot-it’s on lowest settings. He can open doors, his strength is ridiculous he can push and pull things so it is too dangerous to leave him on his own. He has never been left in room with a monitor etc it’s impossible.

I can only breastfeed in side lying position due to size of my breasts and latching issues, so once we get to 3am feed I automatically fall back asleep and that’s it, baby is still in bed with us and having an all night buffet coz I’ve left my boob out.

My OH works 13 hour days 6 days week manual labour so it’s hard for him to help me because he’s tired too.

I’m just exhausted now, I’m not asking for 8-12 hours straight sleep just maybe 6 hours? I currently get 2 x 2 hours broken sleep and it has been like this for over a year, when I try and sleep train during the night I can’t function at all.

I was thinking the only way possible is to try and get his Dad to do pick up put down for a few nights. Get him to try and take a bottle at 12 might fill him up then eliminate that? I dunno We have annual leave for next 3 days so good opportunity to try something out.

Any tips which are not cry it out?

I also don’t know if I need to consider given up breastfeeding for him to sleep better? (We are both not ready to)