Just venting I guess

[GwenStacy]

I'm somewhat broken by all this. I love my daughter but why the fuck won't she sleep? I know it's mostly my fault which makes it harder. She's 14.5m now, still feeds to sleep, still in our bed, sometimes still awake at 9pm. I wish, wish, wish I'd dealt with all this sooner. I can't see how controlled crying will work - I went out for one night and she didn't sleep until gone 11, then woke up 45 minutes later and cried until I got home at 12.45. I wish I had the guts to sleep train her because I need some time to myself occasionally.

Sigh.

My sincere advice would be to stop breastfeeding her, and move her to her own room, with a beaker of water next to her pillow. You'll get much better sleep that way.

Your daughter is used to attachment parenting (feeding to sleep, co-sleeping) and as such she used you as her only source of comfort.

It seems you would now like to change to a more routine parenting style (sleep alone, autonomous settling, set bedtimes and naptimes).

Your DD is going to find this hard because unless you give her an alternate source of comfort, she will have nothing to help her sleep.

Since she is used to sucking to sleep (breastfeeding) I would recommend persevering with a dummy. She won't want it, because it isn't her Mums breast. But it would be close to cruel to not give her any alternate to suck on as a comfort. I would preserver with this almost to the point of giving her no choice but to accept it. She may even another comforter as well, maybe a smell of you. I find Mummy's (unwashed) pillow case works well as a 'blankie' initially.

A nice smelling blankie and dummy to suck will help her physically gain the security and comfort to sleep without you. After that, the rest comes down to hardwork, care and consistency. It will probably involve lots of crying, much shushing and some sitting next to the cot patting.

Can I just say, it is not your fault.

I get quick angry at the guilt heaped on the parents of good sleepers. If you have a baby who will settle back to sleep without a feed with some shushing and patting. If you have a baby who will grizzle for five minutes as a newborn and then go to sleep. If you have those things it is easy to say that you have a good sleeper because you have a good routine and be smug about it. I'm not denying that a good routine can help. But if you have a bad sleeper, who screams blue murder when you put them down, the choices are often to effectively sleep train a tiny baby or to roll with it.

So the first thing I would say is let go of the guilt. Then decide how you want to deal with it and how far you want to go with sleep training. There are lots of options.

on the parents of bad sleepers.

Sorry for that typo!

It's not your fault. I have a bad sleeper (3 DC's, one terrible sleeper) and my brother fell out with me over it when he unleashed his view that it was all my fault for my rubbish parenting.
As it turns out, after never sleeping through the night, still having milk, cuddles etc.. She magically slept through all by herself at 2years and 1 month. And is now the best sleeper of all of them!!
It was hellish, the worst years of my life. Vent away but don't blame yourself. All children are different.

Absolutely everything that Penguins said.

I have two terrible sleepers. The first one was made worse by CC (and I still tried it more than once, being convinced that he was just 'not ready' the first time...or the second time...or the third time...). The second one - I did everything 'right'. He does not feed to sleep, goes to sleep happily by himself in his own room, in his cot...still awake every hour of the night, such that I need to co-sleep anyway just to cope.

If you do want to do something about it, what the first two posters suggested are just not going to work (sorry - voice of bitter experience here, they just won't). Ann Caird is an absolutely brilliant sleep consultant who uses gentle methods to get very attached babies and toddlers sleeping independently. Can't recommend her highly enough.

I bfed DS1 to sleep every bedtime and every nap and every (very frequent) night wakings until he was that age. Then I went back to work, wasn't coping and one night he bit me (by accident) and I thought, right! I'm done with this! Following day I night weaned him. No milk after 11pm or before 5am and I started putting him down awake at bedtime.
Used a mix if dr jay Gordon and a thread on here called 'what worked for us'.
Both gentle methods and dr jay Gordon is an advocate of a family bed so may be doubly relevant ( he's not for everyone though, I think he's anti-vaccinations so I for one only picked what made sense to me from his ideas ;))
Start tackling one thing at a time - would you rather she sleep better? Go to bed better? Have her own bed?
It's never too late to change anything.