Hey Tam, lovely to see you. Have you moved yet? Your DS turned two in Jan didn't he? Hope you're all well still.
Swaliswan and Stefka, welcome in. As Tam said, I (and some of the others have been around for sometime.) Hopefully Amber will be along to link to our blog soon. I can't even remember the address
Basically we've all tried lots of different things but I think the consensus is that some children are not as good at sleeping as others. After spending a lot of the early months fretting and trying to do something about it, ie routines, I gave up started co-sleeping and started getting more sleep. My DD was / is a baby that needed that bit of extra security. She was a tough colicy baby who cried when put down and was similar at night. It was really exhausting but it is amazing how you can forget it. Now, at 17 months the nights are manageable. She may make briefly once or if teething may wake for a loooong time but you do manage it.
There are classic growth spurt ages, 4, 6, 9 months or thereabouts (hopefully EP will correct me if I'm wrong) 4 months was absolutely awful for us but my DD has improved ten fold since about 13 months, she's still an early riser generally but I've just accepted an earlier bed time for myself.
Time and maturity are the key. I'm not a great believer in these 'bad habits' people talk about because it makes very little difference to us and how much DD sleeps. She's a law unto herself.
Tell us a little about your situation, what you want to achieve and we can give you some tips or at least some sympathy.