Have I created bad sleep habits?
This is probably the question I get asked more than any other. Usually some version of "have I ruined it, is this my fault, did I do this by feeding him to sleep, or rocking her, or lying down next to him every night for the last four months." And I understand exactly why it gets asked, because somewhere along the way a lot of parents picked up the idea that comfort is a mistake you pay for later. So you do the thing that works in the middle of the night, the thing that actually gets everyone back to sleep, and then you lie there afterwards with the words of “you've made a rod for your own back” swirling around in your head.
What a "habit" actually is here
When people say bad sleep habits, what they usually mean is a sleep association. Your baby has learned that sleep tends to happen a certain way, with feeding or rocking or your body close by, and so that is what they reach for when they surface between cycles overnight. That is genuinely all it is. In my opinion, it can only be something negative if it isn’t working for you.
An association is something your baby has learned, which means it is something they can also unlearn or learn to have other associations to rely on as well, as they grow and as their sleep matures. The thing you did to survive a bad-sleep-fog is not some permanent setting you've accidentally locked in for the next three years. Nothing is ever that concrete with baby sleep.
Babies are also just built to want you. Reaching for a parent to get back to sleep is not a flaw in your baby or a sign you've done something wrong, it is one of the most normal things a small person does.
Why it feels so permanent
The reason this fear digs in so hard is that when you are deep in it, every night looks like evidence. They woke, you fed, they slept, so the feeding must be the cause, and tomorrow it will be the same, and therefore it will always be the same.
But sleep is moving the whole time underneath you, even when it doesn't feel like it. Wake windows stretch, naps consolidate, the nervous system matures, and the thing that felt completely fixed in month four often looks quite different by month seven or eight, without you doing anything dramatic at all. I see this constantly with families who were convinced they'd created a forever problem, and then the baby grew and a lot of it quietly loosened on its own.
I'm not saying do nothing and wait it out forever. I'm saying the permanence you are feeling is mostly the exhaustion talking, not an actual fact about your baby.
What I'd actually do first
If you want to change something, and that is a completely fair thing to want, I'd start with the parts that don't ask anyone to put in much work.
Look at sleep pressure first, so how long they've been awake and whether the day is set up for them to be genuinely tired at the right times. Then the sleep environment, dark and boring and consistent. Then the wind-down, same rough shape every night so their body knows what's coming. A lot of the time, when you get those three things sitting right, the settling itself gets easier almost on its own, because you've stopped asking your baby to fall asleep when their body isn't actually ready.
That is the order I walk almost every family through. Fix what you can fix without anyone having to work, see how far it gets you, and very often it's most of the way there.
And if it isn't, if you've done all of that and it's still not working and it's genuinely not sustainable for your house, then making a more active change is also allowed. Both of those things are true at once. You can have been doing nothing wrong this whole time, and still decide you need something to shift. One doesn't cancel the other.
So before you spend another night cataloguing everything you think you've broken, I'd ask the other question instead…what does my baby actually need from their day to make sleep easier.
What's the thing you're most worried you've created at the moment? Tell me what's going on and I'll tell you what I think.