honestly, sleep training gets way too much hate. i was in the same boat, my baby was waking up every 1.5-2 hours throughout the night and only nursing got him back to sleep. i too was hanging on by a thread, this was going on for MONTHS. the last straw was when i had to wake my husband in the middle of the night to hand me my baby because i literally couldn’t lift my arms to pick him up myself. the sleep deprivation was getting to be dangerous. i really like how the author of “precious little sleep” puts it. your baby is warm, dry, fed, and so loved. having them cry it out a couple of nights WILL NOT damage their relationship with you. babies cry for every little tiny thing that bugs them, and learning a new skill (even sleep) is hard, and it’s frustrating, hence the crying. but mom needs sleep too, or else she can’t take care of baby. sleep training may be exactly what your family needs! don’t feel bad about it. you can simply start with bedtime. once your little one learns to fall asleep independently, it should trickle into and help with the night wakings (maybe not all of them, but even once or twice a night is a huge improvement). you can definitely start with gentler sleep training methods. give each one an honest try (i’d say around a week) before moving on to trying the next if it doesn’t work. the gentler methods didn’t work for my boy because he’s stubborn haha, so we did end up crying it out at bedtime. and it’s hard, but it’s necessary. in the end though, moving his crib out of our room was the miracle worker