Night nursing regression and sleep training fail
Our LO is 10 months now and we've been struggling with sleep since the beginning. We worked very hard to get her to do independent naps but could never get past a 30 minute night nap (she will wake after the 30 minutes and then we'll fail to put her down asleep for the rest of the night).
We have failed to get her to sleep at all without intervention, we usually have to walk her or sing to her to get her to fall asleep. At 7 months we were able to break the nursing to sleep and nursing through the night, but she's since regressed and I believe it's because she's teething and finds no other way of falling back asleep acceptable. Last night, she cried for 2 hours because we wouldn't nurse her back to sleep.
We've also tried sleep training via Ferber (we have and have read the book). When we realized that the checkins weren't calming her down, we tried full CIO. Our girl is very stubborn and has cried for 3 hours with no end in sight before we've caved. We've tried this a few times now since 5 months and have never gotten any progress (Mom's heart can't take more than an hour of screaming, and Dad's caps at that 3 hours). We've also tried the chair method but similar to the checkins she'll just scream in your face for hours.
This is taking a huge toll on everyone in the house and we're not really sure what to do. We're stuck at safe co-sleeping but we don't want to be. Does anyone have suggestions before we try to find the money for a sleep consultant?
Our schedule is 8:30am morning wake, 11:30am nap , 2:30pm nap (if she let's me), then 8:30pm bedtime. She won't sleep past 30 minutes unless it's contact sleep, and the second nap only sometimes happens. If she doesn't go down at 2:30pm then I will usually be able to get her down at 4:30pm when I'm done work for the day.