14 month old sitting up to sleep. Please help 😭

FTM and toddler is currently 14 months old as of today. (I also posted this to r/sleeptrain

My baby has never slept well until he turned one year old. We have done Ferber method and cio and everything. He would sleep for a few nights in a row but something always threw him off in that first year and it was NEVER consistent sleep.

He then FINALLY slept around 11.5 - 12 hours a night around his birthday. (It was amazing) From round 7 pm to 7 am. And then he would take a nap fine around 9:30-10:00. 1.5 hours typically because he pooped or when he doesn’t poop during his nap he sleeps around 2-2.5 hours. We have been trying to transition from 2 naps to 1. The second naps just doesn’t happen anymore but he’s exhausted around 6 pm. Anyways, I usually change diaper, read book, sing and walk him around and put him down drowsy and he would self regulate to sleep. Even more recently, I have been doing a longer “wind down” time and less singing to hopefully decrease stimulation.

This has come to a screeching half this week for four days. He has been sitting up for HOURS during the night. Not necessarily crying but nodding off and whimpering when his body would wake back up and then nod back off again. I mean like 2-4 hours. We have usually gone in there to rock him asleep and he would sleep all the way until 2:30 am and then cry and refuse to lay down for 2-3 hours. It’s been the same thing for four days.

He has been running a fever of 100.8. I took him to doctor yesterday to rule out ear infection or anything else and he was fine. No ear infection. Just a big buildup of wax on one side. So we started the olive oil drops. The virus just needs to run his course doc said. Any other time he has run a fever, he has slept more. Not less. But I’m wondering since he’s older if he is just handling it differently. Either way, the wakeups and refusing to lie down are happening at the exact same times every day and night so I’m thinking it’s a sleep training issue.

I feel like we have a good system down but every week he somehow comes up with a bad habit to not sleep independently and idk what to do. I have read that eventually if you just let him CIO his body will eventually slump over but at this point it’s taking hours and hours with no falling over to sleep and it messes up our day the next day and then he doesn’t sleep for a nap and everyone is fucking exhausted and feeling hopeless. Excuse my French. 😭

This post is all over the place and if you have questions, I will try and answer them. This sleeping situation with toddlers is so complex that I really don’t know how else to lay out this problem in this post.

Please help or let me know if you’ve gone through the same thing. Is this a phase? Or if he strong willed? Or is he uncomfortable? Was he not feeling well and then made a habit of it??

Thank you in advance 😭😭