11 month old not sleeping - help!

[Pinkslipper123]

Hi everyone, I would be grateful for any tips and advice. My daughter is 11 months old. I'm still on mat leave but due to go back to work in 4 weeks.
Apologies for the long message.
She had awful reflux as a baby so had to be held for 40 minutes after each feed by which time she would have fallen asleep so we were able to put her down in her cot. She slept all night (10-6) from 3-5 months (bliss!) but with 3 naps 30 mins each.
Since she hit 5 months, she kept waking every half an hour at night and we tried everything to settle her back into her cot. She refused to sleep in her cot but would sleep in our bed. We even tried getting a cot bed and removing the side so she would think she was in bed. It's now got to the point where we co sleep and she was sleeping all night until a month ago where she started waking every 30 mins :-(
Co sleeping was meant to be a short term solution as that was the only Way we could function.
I need to do something to get her to self settle and sleep in her cot as I'm exhausted with the night waking now.
I've tried the pick up put down and no cry sleep solution with no luck.
She's also awake every 30 minutes at nap time (with settling, she naps 2 hours, 11am-1pm). She's awake for the day at 6.30 and I start rocking her to sleep at 6.45 pm after bath story and bottle with an aim to be asleep for 7pm (for 30 minutes...!).
My aim is for her to sleep in her cot and self settle at nap times and at night but how do I do this???
I know I've 'made a rod for my own back' as I've never taught her to self settle.
She's a lovely happy extremely active baby when she's awake. She's not teething at the mo. Has just started walking independently so I guess she's processing this.
I've got no help in the day and hubby works 12 hour days 5 days a week.
Thank you all very much for taking the time to read this and for your advice.

Hi, Just wondered how long you persevered with the pick up put down technique? I have found it to work for my kids. Once they 'got' the idea that I wasn't giving in and they started to accept their cots as being the place to sleep. I then had to either stand in the room, usually side on to the child and wait till they fell asleep. Gradually i was able to stand by the door and eventually able to leave the room and they'd settle them selves.

Sounds easy right? It was a bloody nightmare and had me exhausted, but it did eventually pay off.

Is she night weaned?
It's a bit controversial here on mn but after 5 months of ds waking every 90mins-2 hours and needing feeding then rocking to sleep we night weaned him and did cc (well, our version of it) when he was 11.5 months. He cried for 2 hours on and off the first night, 20 minutes the second and slept through on the third and every night since (he's 17 months now).
I agree with pp that perseverance is the key. When he was 8 months I must have gone up to his cot 20 bloody times a day for three weeks to get him to nap in his cot but it was worth it. Equally with the cc, it's not something I ever thought we'd do but I was pregnant and knackered. The first night was just awful but having started we just had to carry on and now he goes to bed happily at 7.15-30.

Nothing controversial about doing CC at 11.5 months NickyEds.

Realistically speaking if you have been unable to establish good sleeping habits by 1 year old then good sleep habits are unlikely to learnt without a high level of distress. IMO once you get to that point, CC is swift and effective so the best of the options.

The only time CC is controversial is when used significantly younger than 12 months old - when a great number of non-distressing methods may well be effective.

Sorry to hijack thread but NickyEd what did you do for CC to night wean your baby?
I have been trying to do the same thing...First of all I stopped feeding her to sleep - gave her last breastfeed after bath but before story and pyjamas to break the feed to sleep association. She had already been self settling for naps for months so she dealt with this totally fine -- and it seemed to work at first in that we decided to leave her for 5 mins and then go in and say 'time to sleep now' with a quick pat and shh and then walk out and repeat. The first night we tried this at her 10.30pm wake up she never cried for longer than 5 mins at a time...we only had to go in there twice I think. It went on for 1.5 hours and was stressful but not too bad as she wasn't crying for very long at a time, falling asleep again and then waking after 10 min crying. Eventually she slept and we did this consistently for a couple weeks and now she only wakes once at night usually around 3-4am. I have tried not feeding her a few times and she has slept through so I know she is capable ! But usually it still involves up to an hour and a half of on and off crying if I try not to feed her. I am at my wits end as I thought CC was supposed to work in that the crying reduces to nothing night after night until eventually they don't wake up at that time anymore. Maybe she isn't ready to night wean? But she is on solids eating 3 meals a day and has managed quite a few nights with no feed before...I don't know what to do !

Oh and she was 9 months when we started night weaning and is 10 months now

If you feed her, say once in the night does she go straight back to sleep until morning? If so then I'd probably just feed her. With ds night weaning wasn't too bad as he genuinely wasn't hungry, just needing some milk to go back to sleep, although even that wasn't totally reliable. So we replaced milk with rocking back to sleep. That was a stupid thing to do. Cue 45 minutes of rocking twice a night. So we just did bath, bedtime bottle, teeth and into cot. He did very well at this and went to sleep ok. He'd then wake and want to be rocked back to sleep and this was where we used the cc. We coincided it with switching to cows milk too- not sure if that made any difference??
I found that the cc just seemed to break the rocking habit. He still wakes in the night now, if I happen to be awake I hear him but he settles himself back to sleep with his dummy. Does your baby have a dummy?
I agree with FATEdestiny in that it's really hard (dare I say it totally unrealistic) to establish good sleep habits with no crying at all. My friend and I were in the same situation at the time and she just wouldn't entertain any kind of sleep training and she's still waking at least twice a night 6 months later. On the whole I go with "do whatever works whilst it works" so for a long time feeding to sleep was fine with us, the rocking however.....nightmare!

Wow thank you all for taking the time to read and respond!
I tried pick up put down for about a month then gave up as it didn't work at all
Yes she's fully weaned and hadn't needed any night bottles since 4 months old.
I think cc is the way forward but how do I do it 'properly'? As at the mo she's comatose by the time we put her down and tiptoe out the room ninja style.
Do I start with naps first? I'm still rocking her to sleep after a bottle. Should I enlist the help of a sleep professional?
I'm really overwhelmed by the support here ladies. Thank you so so much xx

No she's never used a dummy.

www.jofrost.com/controlled-timed-crying-technique-ctct/

This is a pretty good over view of cc.

I would chose a time, perhaps a bank holiday, when you have a few nights without work to go at it. Do you have a partner? If so get them on board and identify the weakest link! By this I mean the one who will give in and go in to rock the baby to sleep. In our case it was dp and he just had to sit upstairs despairing. Once you've started don't stop. We left ds to cry for 2 mins, in to Shhh and reassure, another 2 mins, back in, then 4 minutes, 4 minutes, 7/8 minutes ish. After that I cheated and went in and slept in the nursery (there's a proper bed in there) so stopped going to the cot and just Shhed from bed. I won't lie the first night was grim but in some ways I felt better for just doing something- by this time I was knackered and just needed to Do Something.

With naps I just kept going in and resettling him over and over but he was only 7/8 months then so younger.

Hi have a look here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep/1394888-What-worked-for-us-Hope-this-helps

This is very useful if you don't know where to start and aren't sure about CC yet.
In the end though I used a sleep consultant at about this age as I was just too exhausted to make a plan and stick to it!
If I had 4 weeks to sort and could justify the £ it I would definitely consider that route as I felt so supported and she was always so positive even when I couldn't see progress! I also got DH onside to deal with night wakings and I think this helped to break some of the sleep associations like rocking. Good luck.

Thank you ladies. Really good links. The link you sent liveinthepresent sounds like it was written by me - exactly like my DD so there's hope :-)
Yes, DH is on board too and we'll give things a go this bank hol weekend so wish me luck! If I crack then I think sleep consultant will be money well spent. Thanks again for all the tips and advice xx

Just to say we did jo frost (as per link above ) at 9 months and really did work! Now to tackle my insomnia!

nickyEd - Thanks - well no say if I feed her at 1am when she wakes up (like last night) she will wake up between 3-4hours later without fail. Any idea why this is?? If I don't feed her she has sometimes slept til morning with no feed at all. So I have decided for now to just keep 1 night feed but it can't be until 3am earliest or she will wake up again before morning. So last night she woke at 1am and cried on and off (not for longer then 5 or 6 mins at a time) for 1 hour. Then she slept for an hour until 3am and woke up crying again so that's when I fed her. And then she'll sleep until 6.30am when I feed her properly (both breasts) Then she's in a pretty fractious mood all morning until her next nap 2 hours later. And doesn't eat much breakfast really. She then (if we let her) will sleep for a solid 2 hours in her first morning nap so she is obviously not well rested from her night sleep !! And no she has never had a dummy... She seems pretty attached to her teddy in her cot though, I find her sleeping holding him or cuddling him.
Thanks for the links I will look at them !