What about the sleep nanny option? I realise that lots might not be able to afford it, but if it is about £1k I would gladly sacrifice the yearly holiday and lots of other luxuries too to scrape the money together to try it.
I suspect there are lots of people who will say they wouldn't consider bringing a stranger in to sort it out, or if it involved any kind of crying wouldn't be willing to try. And it is this kind of thing that I don't understand - that people can be SO exhausted as lots of you on here and in SUCH a state, that you still will turn away from possibilities that many say have worked.
In my mind, a seriously sleep deprived parent and a child who is sleep deprived too (and I have seen the behaviour both in and out of school from pre-schoolers and school age children who don't sleep) is a big problem. If a child did other harmful things to themselves and to their parents,mew wouldn't sit by and accept it as inevitable and something to simply put up with - we would act. So (and medical conditions and SN aside of course)if people havent given sleep training a serious attempt (either themselves or via a sleep nanny or similar) after long periods of sleep deprivation and feeling as crap as is described so graphically on here, I can only conclude that the sleep deprivation is depriving people of rational thought.
I understand that sleep training is emotive and requires a real commitment and courage which will be difficult to find if you are totally exhausted. I understand too that no one wants to hear their baby or child cry and finds it even harder if there is another who will wake up. However, there are lots of accounts on here of people who felt just like that and did sleep training and have changed lives. Isn't it worth trying - seriously gearing up for it and giving it a real go,with the expectation if success.
So it would seem to me necessary to first recover some strength (perhaps a holiday with partner or another adult, where both can sleep to recover strength.
Planning ahead - getting the sleep nanny in, or knowing exactly what the plan for sleep training is and deciding how long it is necessary to do it for and what the tricky points will be etc. The planning might also involve finding a way of getting the 2nd child and partner into another house for a while,so it can go ahead.
Launching the sleep training,whole heartedly and with an expectation of success - and if it is somethig you just know you can't do yourself, then getting someone else to do it, while you go away so you don't have to suffer it - can be a paid person or partner or relative or friend.
I think the really gearing up for it and planning, as if about to launch a battle is the key thing. It isn't a battle against the child or baby, but against the sleeplessness which really IS like an enemy attacking you, if you look at some of the terrifying descriptions of the impact it is having on people. If this really serious approach using family and then using a professional sleep nanny didn't work....then I might have to accept the sleeplessness......but until I had systematically done this and paid someone else to do it too, I really dont think I could accept the situation as so many on here seem to have, without having tried everything.
And I apologise, because I'm sure lots of what I am saying is hurtful to some of you who are so tired. I just hope that the encouragement given by people on here who were in exactly the same place as some of you and did manage to conquer it rather than have to live with it long term, helps at least one or two to find the strength to have another go at tackling it and to succeed with breaking what has a truly crippling and debilitating effect on so many of your lives. It would be just so fantastic if some of these methods which some people seem so resistant to trying could help move people's lives out of this unbearable phase.