I would like to preface this by saying I absolutely know IABU and it's not a great idea to consider, but me and my DH cannot continue like this (I don't think I'm losing my mind - I've lost it!) and it's all exacerbated by my being 9 weeks pregnant.
DD had a dummy from birth then from about 2.5 only had it at night time for sleep. At 4.5 her bottom two adult teeth came through so we got rid of the dummy straight away (dummy fairy - went very well and no drama at all). Although no drama, her sleep was affected to some extent - waking up 1-3 times a night for a tuck in, quick reassurance pat. It was manageable.
But this has declined over the six months she's been without, with the last at least two months having us settling her twice a night and having to get into bed with her. She's very hard to settle (not upset, but clearly struggling to get back to sleep), and we can lie there for hours.
She has said on a few occasions that she misses her dummy - it's not a regular thing she says though.
We have tried so many things to settle her/keep her asleep but they haven't worked. (Think: night light, gro clock, white noise, aromatherapy sleep patches, weighted blanket, heating on during the night, punishments in terms of removal of TV privilege, and lots of praise for nights that are better than others). We've also tried ignoring her shouts but she literally screams and cries - not ideal at 2am.
Over Christmas, we had three nights of no shouting and full nights sleep, purely as she thought Father Christmas wouldn't come. Although this solved our problem of getting no sleep, I actually think she was awake in the night but just didn't shout, so hadn't solved her broken sleep issue.
She's generally pretty good at bed time and is asleep no problem, but we have noticed this last couple of weeks this is becoming more difficult and she just seems wide awake.
We're exhausted and I just don't know what else to do.