Anyone successfully sleep trained an 18 month old? What did you do?

[GalaxyDisaStar]

DD2 has never slept well. She is 18 months old and has never slept through. A good night would be two night wakings. A bad one could easily be double figures, or up and down for long periods. Sometimes she re-settles easily, sometimes not.

We have recently night weaned her, but it has made no difference. She has gone to sleep on her own (no feeding to sleep) for at least six months. No difference. We can't co-sleep because she just thrashes about and demands milk - we did it a lot in the early days though.

I am desperate. I have that constant dragging exhaustion of long term sleep deprivation. I always said that I wouldn't do CIO, but I will literally do anything that makes her sleep. Her not doing so is now having too negative an effect on me and the rest of the family.

Any success stories out there? What did you do?

Oh you poor thing, I have no advice sorry but sympathy, sleep deprivation is truly horrible. When she wakes is she asking for milk, comfort, just lively, upset?

Thanks!

She is sometimes asking for meeee (milk), but she understands now that the meeee goes to sleep (we do a whole conversation about big sister going to bed, meeee going to bed, DD2 going to bed at bedtime) and doesn't normally take much convincing it isn't on offer. She's normally just sort of awake, and cross that she is, if that makes sense. She normally yells 'mummy, mummy, mummy' in an escalating sort of way, as if she wants me to fix it. She yells blue murder if I don't go. She stands up, has a hug through the bars, sometimes a drink and then I lie her back down. I go through phases of trying to cut out the hug or the drink, but it makes no difference. Sometimes she's then out for a couple of/few hours. Sometimes it's repeated again very frequently.

I always went for the path of least resistance and fed DS back to sleep :) so can't advise on sleep training but I know people who've had success with it.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be along soon!

Thanks. I feel if I continue to feed back to sleep there is unlikely to be much improvement for quite some time, and I can't take multiple wakings for another year or whatever.

Bump for anyone else. Thanks for the sympathy Fur. Happy Christmas.