sleeeeeep

so if you have read any of my previous posts on sleep, you know that z is not the best sleeper.  in fact, he didn't really nap until he was about 6 months old, after he started to become a little more mobile.  i mean, who has ever seen a newborn nurse til they were satiated, exhibiting the typical milk-drunkeness signs, and pass out only to wake up 10 minutes later, bright eyed and ready to go.  we gradually got him onto a more reasonable bed time and later he started to take naps twice a day, but it still usually took lots of effort on my part to get him down.  when he was 9 months old i started transitioning him to falling asleep in his crib. formerly i would lay down with him in my bed and nurse him and wait for him to fall asleep and then transfer him to his crib, or sometimes, just let him sleep in our bed.  but after he began to kick us in the face, we decided he had to get out! so, because i am just not cool with CIO for him, i decided to try a modified version where, after the bedtime routine, i would nurse him and put him in his crib awake, and he would cry and scream and stand up, i would go in every 5 minutes to rub his back and lay him back down and try to soothe him without picking him up.  after 1week, he went from crying for over an hour to crying for 10 minutes.  i was feeling hopeful.  then, all of a sudden he started crying for longer and longer periods rather than shorter and we were back up to over an hour of crying and screaming.  he was pissed.  so, i decided that i needed to make some modifications.  i noticed that he would not freak out as much if i stayed in the room while he fell asleep.  so, when he falls asleep in his crib, i am there on the floor next to the crib.  it isn't as ideal as just putting him in his crib and leaving the room while he peacefully falls into a nice sleep, but it is ok.  generally he would wake up once or twice in the night, and sometimes we would bring him back to our bed.  then he started waking more frequently, like he was reverting to the newborn stage again, and wanting to nurse all night.  i felt like an all night, all you can eat buffet. so i started researching different methods of night weaning.  Ferber has one wherein you take a baseline by timing how long your child nurses normally at one waking in the night, then each night after that you decrease the nursing session by one minute until you are at zero minutes and then you let them stay in the crib until they fall back asleep.  i tried that very briefly but then we travelled out of state and had to get back to our normal routine and bedtime before any changes were made.  i then found Dr. Jay Gordon's method, which is gentle and stepwise and seemed reasonable and i tead several other mommas' experience with it, most of whom had children like z. so i decided we would try that. here is his blog post for details but basically you pick a chunk of 7 hours that will serve as the time in which the changes will be set into place, so from 11pm-6am.  do normal bedtime routine, including nursing to sleep. for the first 3 nights if z wakes up between those hours, i can pick him up and rock him and cuddle him and nurse him, but make sure he doesn't fall asleep at the breast and put him in the crib awake but drowsy, and we got through these nights but the first night sucked because after i nursed him and put him back in his crib he freaked out and screamed his face off and cried and did whatever he could to avoid falling asleep.  for 3 hours. every time he would calm down, he would make himself stand up and stay awake and scream. he got to the point of the hyperventilating sobs, poor guy. hubs was right there supporting me. but finally z fell asleep. the second night wasn't as bad. the third night was fine. then for the next 3 nights you do the same except you do not nurse, you can rock and cuddle and all that but no milk and then put back into the crib awake. i was not looking forward to these nights because if he freaked out so much when i did nurse him, how much worse would it be without nursing? turns out, it wasn't so bad.  he first night he slept through the night, the second night he woke up and i lay him down on the floor of his room next to me.  he asked for milk and i told him he already had milk and he rolled over and fell asleep.  same with the third night.  the fourth night he slept through.  that was about 2 weeks or so ago and so i guess we have successfully night weaned, but he is still not sleeping through the night and my goal was to night wean and avoid bringing him back to our bed.  which he doesn't but it's because i am sleeping on the floor of his room with him sleeping next to me most nights that he wakes up.  a few nights i tried to just soothe him back down without picking him up, and he freaks out, crying and screaming.  so, dr. gordon does say that this should be done at our own pace and that if we need, we should take a break. so i guess that's what i'm doing.  i'm not going backwards to night nursing but we aren't really moving forward to sleeping by himself in his crib through the night.  everything i read about sleep says that either there's an 18 month sleep regression, an 18 or so month developmental leap-a wonder week leap, and that illness and teething can affect sleep.  and i feel like all of these apply; he had 2 back to back colds, his molars are cutting and he is undergoing huge development right now.  but what's hard for me to figure out is this; they are always teething or going through a developmental leap, so does that mean that they don't sleep well until all that is over?  i'm kind of stuck right now and i guess that i am deciding to stay here in this rut until his molars finish cutting and re-asses then.  i just can't handle the screaming and crying at night; i am too exhausted to deal with it and i just really don't like letting him scream and get so upset for so long.  sigh.  so, i guess this sleep training really is a dance.  anyone have any experience with this or any ideas besides CIO?