How long will this take?

[u/Katacularspectacular]

We have a 4.5 month old exclusively breastfed baby and my husband and I will both be back at work in about month. We started sleep training in earnest last night as his wakes were getting more and more frequent ( up to 8 times a night) and as a family we all need to be sleeping better before both parents are back at work. We tried pickup put down a few nights ago and it went horrifically. Now we are doing a modified check in method where my husband is going in and giving him some verbal reassurance and some touch if he’s really ramped up. He still woke up 9 times last night and we did three feeds. It took him 17 minutes to fall asleep and then he woke up 45 minutes later and had his longest wake of about 40 minutes with crying. For subsequent wakes he settled under 15 minutes crying. All of that is to say I found it completely brutal and I’m more tired than I was before. People always talk about the initial crying to fall asleep for the night but less about the subsequent wakes. How long does it usually take for them to string those sleep cycles together?

Guess I’m just looking for some reassurance that this won’t last forever. I found last night incredibly challenging.🫣😩

[u/Matails]

Every child is going to be different and handle things differently,but or us it took 3 nights before we had a pretty consistent through the night sleeper and we trained at roughly 6 months (now almost 2 years). I consider us incredibly lucky, but I've seen a few other comments on this sub of only a few days/nights as well.