Dd has been a truely dreadful sleeper from about 6 months. She often woke every couple of hours through the night, or was awake for hours at a time, and would only go to sleep if I bf her into a coma. That stopped working at about 13 months so we had to rock her (standing up, with fair amount of jigging) into a coma all through the night.
She is 20 months now and over the last couple of months since we moved her into a big bed has gradually been sleeping better at night, although still being rocked to sleep (not great as she is nearly 2 stone!). A couple of weeks ago I started waking her up after max 30min nap, which improved things further, and the last week she has slept the whole night through!!! On top of that, last night, after I finished tucking her in, she said "bye bye Mummy", so I left expecting her to start wailing. She chatted to herself for half an hour and then fell asleep!!!
I cannot tell you how astounding all this is compared to how she was only a few weeks ago or how much better I feel after a few decent nights' sleep. We had tried everything apart from cc, but it appears we just had to wait for dd to decide to do it by herself. I thought it might give hope to anyone who is where I was a month ago, thinking I would still be hulking a five year old up and down the bedroom all night.