In desperation. All ideas welcome.

[belindarose]

Can I please canvas opinions on what I should do now? I've posted about DD's sleep difficulties before. She's one tomorrow! Sleep is getting worse and worse and I really don't know where I'm going wrong. Normal routine (times are approximate) is: tea at 5pm, walk at 5.30, bath at 6, stories then BF. Sometimes she falls asleep feeding (very rarely now), more often jerks herself awake and then I rock/ hold her till she's asleep. Daytime naps are around 9.30 for about 90 minutes and around 2pm for about an hour (in cot if we're in, in car or pram if out - usually makes for a shorter nap though).
Night time wakings are frequent. Occasionally DH can settle her, usually she screams for me and then wants a feed. Sometimes this settles her, often it's another 30 minutes (or longer) of holding and rocking till she sleeps. She keeps her eyes wide open, even in the dark.
The last few nights have been even worse than that. We haven't been able to get her to sleep in the evenings at all, just screaming and screaming if held or put in the cot. We've resorted to bringing her downstairs for a while, then trying again. Last night we kept her in her room but did half hour shifts each. Only reading to her kept her from screaming. In the end I took her out in the rain at midnight. She screamed in her pram and I carried her till she fell asleep.
This baby is the happiest, most communicative, enjoyable baby you could imagine in the daytime. She's started signing, trying to talk, pushes her dolls and dolls pram, eats well.
I don't thinks I can do controlled crying. The way she cried last night, even when we were cuddling her, was just awful.
Please, please suggest what we can try... and where we're going wrong.
We're on holiday next week, so that won't be a great time to try anything new I guess, but I'd like to avoid another night like last night!

You're not going wrong anywhere! Please don't pay attention to people telling you that if you do this properly your child will sleep. Some people and that includes babies just don't need a lot of sleep and some have difficulty getting to sleep. My eldest hardly slept as a baby, one 20 min nap during the day ( or in car if going anywhere), she would finally go to sleep about 12 and then wake up every 2 hrs or so. We tried everything and she finally slept regularly through the night at about 5 years old!!! We just had to get through it but as you probably know its amazing how little sleep you can get by on. She is now a beautiful, energetic and successful 16 yr old who sleeps about 5 hours a day, still can't nap during day even if she's tired and has difficulty dropping off at nighttime.
Try not to stress about it, grab any help anyone offers, go to sleep as often as you can. Goodluck

not sure if this will help but can only talk about me and DD
my DD 14m and always held to sleep till about 2m ago, i realised she understood a lot of language so i fed her one nap time ( so me not tired)and started new routine for sleep then stuck her in cot and said go sleep sleep. when she cried i would just put my hand on her and she calmed (in the end)and if she screamed i would gently reassure her, there was crying but i felt she understood and i was physically there to comfort her. also i was as boring as i could be and said as little as poss and little eye contact. anyway after she fell asleep that way for a few weeks i progressed to sitting next to cot and eventually sitting in a chair nearby till she falls asleep
yes there was crying involved but i really feel it wasnt scared crying, more she wanted me to hold her but i kept reassuring her
i also do /did things like, if she started getting up or screaming more i would lay her down / say if u kneel up again mummy will go or if u keep crying mummy will go, stop crying, and i would follow it through and leave for a few minutes
i find that now if i say stop crying, she does and it actually allows her to calm and go to sleep
anyway just saying what has helped us ( i cosleep from midnight still and feed frequently but am gonna tackle this at bank hol w/e ) and i think we came up with our own version of how to do it from what we had read,
good luck
it could be cos you sometimes read to her/ take her downstairs/out in pram she thinks if she carries on she can get that. IMHO if she were my DD she would stay in that cot until she slept at bedtime so that she doesnt get mixed messages, its bedtime in cot or nothing else, of course i realise how hard things can get but if you have a you are getting out that cot over my dead body attitude i suspect/hope you will reap the benefit
btw my dds bedtime 8.15
i am hoping cos we have a good nap and bedtime sleep in cot routine that when we tackle the nightfeeding it will help that too
HTH

There is a common sleep regression around 12/13 months which sounds as if it could be affecting her. Their brains are working really hard on a developmental spurt which messes up their sleep ahead of it. If they're working on other things like trying to talk etc, the effect will be bigger. See here and here.

Thanks for your ideas. We went out tonight for the first time in a year as my parents are visiting. It appears she was up most of the evening (had gone to sleep before we left) but was asleep again before we got home, so a great result! (for us, not my mum). For the first time, she's gone to sleep with someone else, even if she didn't like it much!
I agree, tiredpooky, that we've been inconsistent with her. It's just the hope that something will work I suppose. She does understand a lot of language, so I will try some of your ideas, but she is also very strong willed in everything and I think that if she decides she doesn't want to sleep she's pretty determined not to! Reassured a little, thank you, by darcyfans tale of her DD. AngelDog, I think we've been on threads together before and I've read your links on sleep regression. I agree it's probably affecting DD, but she never recovered from the earlier regressions!

SOunds just like my DD was at the same age. I am kind of hesitant to offer you what might be false hope, but what worked for our family was weaning DD of sleep props of rocking, feeding to sleep, etc. I can't say there was no crying, but we never ever left her to cry on her own. Mostly, it involved me staying with her in her room, but putting her in her cot to fall asleep. And when she woke in the night, my DH went in every single time to re-settle her. Sometimes it took him ages and ages, but I think it was this that changed her sleep behaviour more than anything.

I used the elizabeth pantley book, No Cry Sleep Solution. I thought it was very sensible. I was left thinking that some childre definitely are less likely by virtue of their natures to sleep well, but that doesn't mean you have to throw up your hands and resign yourself to sleepless nights until they are in school. God, if I had thought that that's was what lay ahead of me I would have run away from home!

ooh, just reading it back , I have made it sound much easier than it really was! At first it did take nearly 2 hours to get her to go to sleep in her cot alone - and she did cry quite a lot, obviously not at all happy about having her props removed, but was never abandoned.