8 month old sleep

I'll start by apologising, this is gonna be quite long, but we're at the point of begging anyone who may have been through something similar to share any tips they might have. Myself and Mum are desperate, especially with Mum going back to work next month.

So, for context. We have 8 month old little boy. Light of our lives, absolutely the best thing ever, but since 6 months he's been hammering us on the sleep front.

He was never a bad sleeper once he got down, but it has always been incredibly difficult to (1) Get him to fall asleep (2) put him down when he is asleep and (3) keep him asleep to get him decent stretches.

Since 6 months it feels like all of these problems have become exacerbated.

His daytime naps are short, they always have been, we're working on getting him to link the sleep cycles but it only works if he's on us and has assistance, and even then it isnt a sure thing by any means.

It can take us 15/20 mins or longer to even comfort him to sleep, and when he does sleep, its a battle to get him transferred over. He will often wake and the cycle will start again.

Sometimes we're talking a 2 hour battle all in - for an hour of sleep before he wakes up again. This can happen at any point of the night and its a 50/50 chance if the battle resumes.

He has had what feels like a lot of development in the past 2 months his first 2 teeth have come through, he's learnt to sit, crawl backwards, shuffle forwards and pull himself to standing.

I can honestly write an essay on each issue but to sum up.

Difficult to get to sleep Unable to transfer reliably Short sleep cycles

These three combined will usually mean that he's overtired, which then makes the problem even worse.

He has an anchored wake up time of 7am.

We're currently working with a sleep consultant and are having some troubles with their method - soothe, settle, repeat - it feels a lot like crying it out even though we are co-regulating.

We arent throwing the towel in with it. But its harder him crying through this method than battling him to sleep in it's way.

Im just looking for stories, anecdotes, tips of what others who have had some, or all these issues, have done that we might be able to implement alongside.

Please feel free to ask any follow up questions and thanks for reading this far if you did!!