I have just learnt the hard way to sign-in before starting a new thread, as I mis-typed my password and lost my entire rambling, longwinded, original thread!!!
Help please, please, please with my 11 month DD, her night time sleeping is awful...I am so desperate!
She goes to bed fairly well at 7pm. I breastfeed her and put her down drowsy but awake. I pat her back for a few minutes and she falls asleep very quickly.
However - she wakes up at midnight and is wide-awake. She cries and cries until one of us goes to her room but relaxes the second we pick her up. As soon as we try to put her down in her cot again, she cries hysterically (Pulling herself to standing). We pick her up and calm her down, put her down...she gets hysterical and so the cycle continues. She normally eventually settles at 3:30am / 4amish.
I often resort to breastfeeding her to back to sleep out of sheer desperation. (Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't) On really bad nights we co-sleep, again out of desperation. She tends to see it as playtime!!
DH has a health condition that makes co-sleeping dangerous, especially when he is so tired so this is not a long term solution. I do not want to get into the habit of making him sleep on the couch.
I am desperate, so desperate. I am desperate enough to start controlled crying tonight - even though my instincts tell me that it is not the right thing to do and that it won't work with my DD's very strongwilled personality!
Please can someone tell me that it gets better, or give some advise, or tell me a success story. Our sleepless nights and nightly-battle-of-the-wills is seriously afecting our relationship (With DD & DH!)...I need to do SOMETHING!