Hoping for some help and advice, please!
My DD 22 months has used a dummy - exclusively for naps and night time - since she was about 3 months old. She has always been exclusively breastfed (and still is) and it was the only way I could get her to fall asleep not attached to me.
She has never been a good sleeper but would nap for 1.5 hours in the day and 8pm-7am at night (with several wakes in between - but that was our normal).
She bit through the dummy during the night 10 days ago so I felt it had to go, because of the risk of choking. I explained it to her and she threw it in the bin herself.
Since then she will not sleep in the day - by the time 2pm rolls around and she has totally missed her nap she is screaming and telling me she wants to sleep but I can't find another way to comfort her.
Once she's back downstairs and playing again she is happy but cannot make it near bedtime without becoming very upset and over-tired. Once asleep at night (still a struggle to get her down) she wakes even more frequently than before.
I feel awful because it was obviously such a huge source of comfort for her but I don't seem to be able to replace it with anything. White noise, audio books, meditation stories, cuddles, back rubs, foot rubs, different lighting, teddies - all of these things she had access to during dummy use so I thought they would serve as consistent sleep associations even without the dummy, but apparently not!
I'm exhausted and, by the end of the day, so is she. Has anyone else had a similar experience? How long could this last in the worst-case scenario? Is there anything I could replace it with that would be safe? Help!