Looking for advice on sleep
I am at a loss of what to do and would love any advice. I'll try to give as much background as possible. Also so sorry for the long post.
My daughter is one year old (13 months to be precise) and never been very good with her sleep. Whether people agree with this or not out of desperation we partially coslept (safely and lots of research) when even a next to me cot seemed not close enough for my daughter. She always started off the night in a cot then would end up in my bed and my partner would then sleep in the spare room so we had lots of space. Always tried to put her down drowsy which never worked. At 6 months we chose to put her in her own room in a cot; she did not do well with this so we made the decision to put her into her own floor bed at 7 months and this honestly improved her sleep. We went from waking every 2 hours on the dot to waking 1 am, 3 or 4 am then awake for the day by 6:30 am.
She's always had a consistent routine of telly off by 6 pm at the latest; bath, bottle, bowl of porridge then bedtime at 7:30pm, which was pushed back two months ago from 7pm when she was reluctant to go to sleep.
She was breastfed till 8 months as that's when I had to go back to work. However towards the end was mainly formula fed. She took to a bottle so well. She's a really good eater and we give her porridge before bed after her bottle as I'd read it was good for melatonin.
She has a battle to nap during the day and most definitely doesn't have consistent amounts of naps each day. She only falls asleep if there is someone in the room. She wants to be rocked or held to sleep then she sleeps till 3:30/4 but she's awake and happy for up to an hour and I don't know what to do to get her back to sleep quicker.
We tried a sleep trainer who said she had to be in a cot but we tried the techniques suggested of not holding her to sleep and just encouraging her to lie down and we stroked her back which worked to get her to sleep for a while but didn't work in the night.
I guess I'm just asking what things have worked for your child to get them to sleep through the night?