My dd is twelve months old. She's never slept particularly well. Bf on demand so waking for 3-ish feeds a night... we got to 9 months and I decided it couldn't possibly be hunger causing the waking, and stopped feeding her between 7pm and 7am. Then a whole load of other problems cropped up - early waking (4am, 4.30am, 5am etc) to name but one. We asked the HV out of desperation, and she suggested a sleep programme where DH would go to her in the night when she woke, reassure her, sit with her etc. This just established a new habit, and she couldn't go back to sleep without him being there. We limped on for a couple of months like this, then returned to HV to be told that 'most parents have to try controlled crying at some point'. We avoided it for as long as we could because we were worried (a) that it wouldn't work and (b) that is would be awful listening to the screaming and wondering if we were doing the wrong thing. We finally gave in and started doing cc, but it seems to have made matters worse. Now when she starts crying in the night we know that it will be a minimum of one and a half hours, possibly two hours, of crying/screaming. She doesn't do this every single night - some nights she just wakes up v. early, other nights she wakes up for about half an hour of screaming, but basically this pattern has continued since we saw the HV five weeks ago (we haven't just let her scream continuously for 5 weeks!). I went back to clinic today as we are at our wits ends. I haven't had a night's sleep for well over a year. Our relationship is suffering - all we ever do is argue, because we have no patience with anything because we are so tired. The HV said 'It hasn't worked - perhaps go back to what you were doing before and try again some other time'. Well thanks for that. Now what do I try?
Will it undo everything and makes matters hundreds of times worse for the future if I bf her at night again? (she always used to go straight back to sleep when she was fed, but I guess there are no guarantees that this will 'work' again).
She has two naps a day, one at around 9.30am and one at around 2pm, for an hour each. Should I reduce the time she naps for in the day, or should I try to get her to have one nap only?
Feel better for writing it all down! Sorry this post is so long - I know there are worse things, and some babies just need less sleep than others, but sometimes I just feel I am losing the plot completely. Any advice gratefully received.