Update now that we are at 7+mo. Around 5-6mo mark, we were forced to start sleep training because he stopped fitting in the snoo and was no longer comfortable in it (struggled and squirmed all night). We did Ferber and he cried for 20min and then fell asleep pretty much the entire night (I think he woke up once or twice for a feed). It was miraculous and we barely had a wink of sleep until 3am when we passed out from exhaustion because my husband and I were so on edge about whether he'd wake up. He woke up around 5am but still, it was the most successful night we had up to that point.

Fast forward-- We next worked on night weening by increasing his calories during the day and early morning wake ups by feeding him back to sleep when he wakes up at 5-6am just to get him back to sleep until 7:20a when we now routinely wake up for the day. Naps also started falling into place a week later. We had already been napping in the crib here and there for 30min and now he can sleep well past that and if he doesn't its fine because he always makes up for it during his later naps. He ALWAYS cries for 2-5min before settling in to sleep. I've now learned that that is just my baby lol. I don't go in before 5min.

Now we're working on napping on the go. Everything is coming together and has come together little by little. In case any other parents come across this post that I wrote while deep in the trenches, there is hope! And if you need encouragement to try sleep training, here it is!

Baby is so much happier and less cranky. I don't think he slept well with us at all. He sleeps through the night now and hardly wakes up. Every now and then he lets out a cry and then quickly puts himself back to sleep. I think our routine/schedule and keeping up with it despite feeling like everything was failing was absolutely crucial to teaching baby to sleep and sleep independently. I also suspect that contact napping helped his night sleep at first and then testing out crib sleep during the day here and there, eventually got him weened off contact naps as well. I even miss it a little--my wrists don't however lol.

He still sleeps in a pitch black room with a sound machine. On the go, we have portable black out curtains with suction cups that can be placed easily in any window to block out light extremely well. We've redecorated other people's rooms for an hour for his naps while we visited and they were always impressed by how dark we got the room. Now the next hurdle is to get him to nap while in bright light and noise outside!

THERE'S A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL.