This may be long but since my almost 20 month old was born I have rocked and nursed him to sleep. Every single nap and at night. I always said I was going to rock him until he doesn’t want me to anymore. We stopped nursing at 16 months and he started sleeping completely through the night. He even learned to self soothe at night on the rare times he did wake up at night without me having to try after I stopped nursing him. But for the last month or so he has been fighting sleep so much while I’m rocking him. It’s so frustrating to me. I dread bed times because I know I’m gonna have to fight him to go to sleep. We have a bedtime routine so he knows it’s time to go to sleep but he will do anything to keep himself awake. Even pull at his eye lids if I can get him to be still. Most nights takes an hour or more to get him to sleep. It’s frustrating and I end up getting upset and kind of mad at him. Well last night I was close to tears and I could not do it anymore and my husband was not home to help me so I laid him in his crib and just walked out. I told myself I was gonna give him and me 5 minutes before I went back in and tried again. When I first walked out he screamed and his cry was pitiful. It sounded like he couldn’t catch his breath. Broke my heart. But it wasn’t even a full 2 minutes and he stopped crying and laid down in his bed and tried to go to sleep and didn’t cry again the rest of the night. It took him like 30 minutes to actually go to sleep. Because he kept sitting up looking around his room. That told me that he may be ready to go to sleep on his own without me having to fight. But I don’t know if I should still rock him for a while before I put him in his bed or if we should do our bedtime routine and cut out rocking him completely. I feel like I’m only rocking him to hold on to that last bit of babyhood. I also don’t want him to feel not loved and abandoned by me just laying him down. I really need advice on what to do and how to do it!