Balancing household needs

Luke is a delightful, happy, growing (75% weight, 97% height - tall and skinny like his Dad), 6 month-old. I'm not someone who believes in Mummy-martyrdom; my needs and the needs of his father need to be considered alongside Luke's. 

AND Mummy and Daddy are tired!

Luke has slept reasonably well for some time now - up 1-2 times a night. He has gone 11-12 hours without a feed a handful of blissful times. Some 'experts' say based on that he should now sleep through the night without a feed and we should institute a strict regime. Some say he should not be feed until 6-7 hours have passed and then 3-4 hourly after that. Some say we should co-sleep to minimise the disturbances to my sleep. Some say solids will make him sleep better; some make him sleep worse. Some say day sleep begets night sleep; some insist babies need to be tired out to sleep well!

AAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!

Luke has a myriad of reasons to have disturbed sleep - recently - jet lag, vaccinations, ambient noise (Chinese New Year), a curious cat, a cold, an itchy facial rash following pumpkin contact, learning to roll/crawl, solids, disturbed schedule due to outings, distracted feeding during the day leading to catching up at night! So hardly surprising he is a little up and down with his waking.

Luke also refuses to read the books! He doesn't always have his longest sleep at the beginning of the night. Even when he wakes up only once it is sometimes at 4-5am and sometimes at midnight! 

We did a very-modified CIO for 3 nights to break his nursing to bed addiction and now he goes down awake after solids/bath/feed/cuddle and is normally asleep after some gurgling if any noise at all. He doesn't feed for naps either so I know he can 'self-soothe.'

At this point I've decided to just keep doing what we're doing. I can't face or stomach 'CIO' at 3am and can't justify it at 6 months. I'm getting 8 hours most nights (in pieces) and his Dad is getting enough sleep for work. Luke is getting 14-16 hours per day and obviously thriving. 

I'm sure things will get better, Luke has the skills he needs to sleep through the night, he just needs time!

Luke with Miffy the transitional object!

Now if only we could train the cat to sleep through the night so Luke was the only disturbance we had!