DD's sleep has never been great: up a lot at night, goes through phases with naps but still doesn't reliably sleep for long enough in the day, difficult to get to sleep, and till recently fed to sleep every time apart from occasional sling/pushchair naps.
I decided to tackle bedtime first, and for about 2-3 weeks have gone for the 'method' of lying beside the cot shushing and patting (when she rolls within reach - she's VERY restless, and there's always lots of scrambling about/standing up/rolling away so I can't reach/clawing through the bars at me). It's been pretty horrible: she cries a lot, and it's taken 30-45 minutes to get her to sleep up until the past couple of nights when she's gone off after more like 20-30, with slightly less crying a few times. The only reason I've stuck with it is because it transformed the nights: down to one or two wakings from four-six. She's also easier to get back to sleep (previously she was waking up post-feed whenever I put her back in cot and it was taking HOURS. Now I have a reasonable chance of resettling her the cot if she stirs).
I went for first nap next, because that's usually been the more reliable one, and have tried the same method with the same result. She still mostly naps for an hour to hour and a half, but it's fairly unreliable and can be shitty short 40 minutes.
It's just so stressful and horrible listening to her scream for so much of the time it takes to fall asleep. She doesn't always scream for all of it - again, it varies a lot, but it goes against all my instincts to leave her crying (although I'm not leaving her alone). I just can't keep going with the bad nights and being the only person who can feed her off to sleep.
I feel like trying to get her off without a feed for both naps is just going to mean half my day is spent lying there while she cries. I don't know if it's pointless getting her to sleep without milk, but then feeding her at night still. But after the ten months of shite sleep I'm still exhausted even on two wake-ups, and I haven't the strength for 45 minutes of screaming at 1 and 4 am without any guarantee of improvement. Plus I have a three year old and can't have her disturbed.
It just feels like things aren't really getting better after the initial reduction in the number of wakings. I don't know where to go from here. I don't want to undo what I've done so far, but it feels really inconsistent and I'm not sure if I'm just confusing her. And I'm still so tired all the time... I just don't know where to go from here?!