Those who suffered long term sleep issues - would you do anything differently?

[ChocolateWombat]

I am asking this, as it occurred to me in light of another thread.
I Know that many people really have a hard time with babies and toddlers sleeping. There are constantly threads asking for help and advice about cracking the issue.
I just wondered if having been through the issue, if any of you would do anything different from the early days with your babies, in lit of your experience. Did any of you try a totally different approach with a 2nd or 3rd in light of difficulties you had?
And finally, what did you think of the advice that was available to you before you had your babies-did it help or did it contribute to the problem?

Might help people experiencing problems or about to have babies...you never know!

I didn't do any form of sleep training with either of my two and it took quite a long time for them to get the hang of it. However, ever since then they have been the best sleepers (9 and 8) and look forward to snuggling up in bed.

So glad I did it the way I did, even though it was hard at times.

With DS1, I spent months stressing out because he wasn't doing the long nap after lunch that Certain Baby Books said he "should". Well he hadn't read the book, and he didn't want to do it. He slept precisely 45m and that was it. I tried everything to coerce him into sleeping the magic two hours, but nothing worked and in the end he just did it in his own time - after he started crawling, and then when he dropped his morning nap.

When I had DS2, I swore I would not stress out about sleep in the same way. I'm not, and it's blissful. I'm not entirely sure how I survived putting myself through that amount of pointless angst.

I think we over stimulated DD when she was tiny. She used to scream all evening (from about 2 weeks old) and we did anything and everything to comfort her. DH used to bounce her to Last Night of the Proms!

I think in hindsight we should have just had a lullaby on and cuddled her quietly. But I am so against letting a baby cry, I am not sure I could have done it!

I did the same for my 2 as much as possible.

I didn't do any sleep training, bf to sleep and at night add long as they wanted and bf to asleep for naps as required.

We don't do bath every night, routine was just pjs, teeth, story, song.

First slept ok and could fall asleep by himself by about 8 months. All went a bit wrong around age one, with teething and a virus, but slept all night happily well before his second birthday.

Second has virtually never slept all night at age 2. . .vastly improved all by himself though and has slept 10 pm till morning a few times.

I still wouldn't change anything, I couldn't leave them to cry and believe they'll figure it out in their own time. A little routine helps for bedtime calm.

I'd have started co-sleeping earlier, had I done my research properly at an earlier stage. And I'd have just accepted that dd needed less sleep than some other kids instead of worrying about it.