I'm not sure if I'm after advixe or ressurance or both here but
My 22month old daughter was rocked/held to sleep until around 1.5. she naturally grew out of that/ clearly wasn't comfortable being held to fall asleep anymore so we started putting her down in her cot and just patting her to sleep, which quite quickly became just sitting in the room while she settled down and fell asleep. For naps we've always rocked her in the pushchair.
I have found her much more challenging than my 1st daughter in almost every way, and now here we are she's nearly two and noone else has ever got her to sleep at night or put her to bed. Not even my husband. I've done it every night since she's been born. He's been more than happy to, and offered multiple times, but I've just been overcome with anxiety about if I don't do it/how I do it is how she gets to sleep, and the same with night wakings (which have been ongoing, she has short phases of sleeping through the night then it all goes wrong again). I'm just at a point where I've no to so much, invites to dinner etc simply because I still don't feel like I can leave her in the evening, or even after she's gone to bed because of how many issues we've had with her sleep. I'm due to go on a hen weekend in August and the thought of it now seems impossible. So this week i just wanted to try putting her down and leaving the room. Yesterday was the first time and she grizzled for just a few mins before falling asleep, I thought wow that was alot easier than I'd anticipated! But today she screamed, for 10mins and I only went in one to put her dummy back in. She was asleep within that 10mins but it broke my heart hearing her. I now feel like the worst mother, why have I done it to her ( even though this is exactly what we did with my 1st daughter and much earlier and she's fine! There's a 7 year age gap so its all very new again) it feels different this time just like everything has the second time around. Now I'm worried what tomorrow will be like if I try again. I know if I really want to try going out every now and then in the evening my husband can just do it the way I have all this time by sitting with her til she falls asleep but I just feel like it's going to be easier if she can just settle herself, and it has been on my mind like she is ready. Now I'm thinking am I reading into all this way too much. Do I carry on putting her down and leaving her for a few more days and see how it goes? My thoughts was she'll get used to this routine then her dad can just do bedtime whenever too, rather than him doing through the same sitting with her to fall asleep as that's what I wanted her to get out of ideally. But I just don't know if im expecting too much and it's not fair on her.