(Feel free to move, I wasn't sure the best place for it)
11m old in a couple of days and it honestly feels like we will never get to independent sleep. Both of my others I could lay down in the crib and walk away by this age. Now, a lot of that is that we let things go with nursing to sleep, etc etc much longer since she didn't have a room in the old house, we were moving, etc. But we've been working on her sleep for over 3m now and she's still screaming the house down at every sleep. We did revery back to rocking her a lot, which I know was not helping. We are committed now, though. I feel like if we don't get on this it will only get harder and harder. I am taking her on a work trip with me in 3 weeks (my mom is coming to help with her) so she needs to be able to be put down more easily and by someone besides DH and I. A timeline always puts the pressure on!
So, we have a number of issues. I think the biggest is that she just does not know how to fall asleep on her own and she is SO determined that she not do so. She screams and screams, she just does not calm. So when we don't rock her we shh/pat. I am sure that is a prop now. I try to do it more lightly and stop before she's fully asleep but she goes right back into full on screaming.
The last couple of nights I've tried GW, which worked well with my other kids. She screams so hard she is gasping for breath. It's horrible. I can never move towards the door because she never even stops for a moment. Both times I ended up patting her after she screamed nonstop for almost an hour. I'm not sure if that's getting us anywhere? It feels like she will scream forever.
Naps DH has been able to pat her down without too much trouble. I asked him to try to lighten it up but I'm not sure how much he's doing that.
We are also in the 2-1, which complicates things. Here's how the last couple of days have looked
7ish: A
10:35 - S
11:10 - A
2:05 - S
3:40 - A
6:45 - brought her up
7:50 - S
I just don't know what to do with a kid who screams and just makes no indication she's going to stop. My others would cry and then kind of wind it down until they were quiet and fell asleep. But she just goes on and on and is so determined about it.
Not sure there's a discrete question here but I'm just at my wits end and I don't know what to do next! TIA for any thoughts.
ETA: I remembered another issue I haven't been able to sort out. DD just wants to nurse every time she wakes. When I'm working evenings (get home between 1 and 3am) or overnights after a night or two she gets down to waking twice a night, sleeping 5 or 6 hours in a stretch. But when I'm home she wakes progressively more frequently. Usually every 2-3 hours. She will nurse and either be back asleep or cry for 30 seconds in the crib and be asleep. If DH goes in and we try to not feed her she might cry for two hours. It's awful. So I end up feeding her because it's easier. But now we are back up to 4 or so NFs which is just insanity. But I don't know what to do! My others startit sleeping more on their own at night at this age, if I remember right, but no sign of that here.
