First time posting here.
I have a 17 month old little girl who has always been a terrible sleeper (due to reflux when she was newborn and would only sleep through contact napping).
Still breastfeeding and it always helped getting her to sleep for naps, and eventually bedtime (after an hour of battling).
She basically naps usually once a day between 40 and 90 mins, she’s not great at connecting her sleep cycles so often wakes early and then I feed her back to sleep so that she’s getting enough daytime sleep. She has a very structured bedtime routine which includes a book, bath and breastfeed. However, it’s taking over an hour to get her to sleep every night and she has no idea how to go to sleep without me or her dad. She is either fed or rocked to sleep constantly and then wakes on average 5 times a night but sometimes up to 8 times. She has white noise, a comforter, an amber light when fed, sleep bag, etc. She has never slept through the night and it is extremely rare for her to sleep more than two hours without waking. She starts off in her cot and ends up in the bed with myself. I’m aware that breastfeeding is a sleep association for her but because she is waking so often I can’t bear the thought of rocking her to sleep 7 times a night so weaning doesn’t seem to be an option. Sleep training isn’t for us.
It’s been 17 months of never sleeping more than two hours and breastfeeding all through the night and I’ve hit a wall. I’ve never felt more lost about what to do for the best. I feel so guilty that she doesn’t know how to put herself to sleep so is having terrible sleep because of this.
She’s such a happy girl despite the bad sleep and has an enormous amount of energy (she’s taken on long walks with our dog everyday and walks the whole way and this still doesn’t tire her out). Any help is much appreciated. It seems like everyone I know has a baby that sleeps and I just feel like I’m doing something very wrong :(.