Finding my baby hard to love due to sleep battles.

[Mum2Es]

And I don't want to feel this way so I'm looking for some practical solutions or suggestions.

DD (11 months) has been a wonderful sleeper for a long time. Putting her down for a nap or at night has always been as simple as wrapping her the right way, giving her a pacifier, putting her in her cot and walking away. She quickly and happily went to sleep alone. She won't nurse to sleep, never has, and she has never wanted company in the room, it keeps her awake. In the past couple of weeks all that has been turned on its head. Getting her down at night isn't too bad - DH has it down to an art, all he does is stays in the room in the dark and she's asleep within minutes. And when she wakes during the night it's USUALLY pretty easy too - she doesn't even wake fully, and I just nurse her in her half asleep state and then pop her back in the cot and she goes straight back to sleep. Sometimes she has long wakeful periods at night which are very frustrating and none of the multitude of things I've tried (feeding to sleep, sitting by her cot patting her, rocking her in my arms, lying in the spare bed in her room with her, taking her in mine and DH's bed) reliably work, she just stays awake until she's ready to go back to sleep.

But the major issue is daytime naps. I need to find a way to help her go to sleep. At the moment, if I try the usual (wrap, dummy, into the cot, walk away) she starts to scream before I even get out the door. I've left her to scream for a minute or two to see if she'll calm down and she doesn't! I've tried going back over and over every couple of minutes to give her dummy back and calm her down, when she starts to doze off I walk away - she screams again. It's distressing to her, me and 4 year old DD too! I've tried staying in the room (usually sitting on the spare bed and not looking at her) - she'll lie quietly for a few minutes then spit her dummy out and start talking to me. I've tried cradling her to sleep in my arms and that has worked, but I can't do that all the time, it kills my back. I've tried lying on the bed with her instead of putting her in the cot but she just thinks its a game. She's recently self-weaned (I still breastfeed her at night but she won't persevere long enough to get milk if I offer during the day) so even if I thought it would work I can't nurse her to sleep.

She has a very rough routine of going to bed around 7:30 - 8pm at night, waking for 1 or 2 feeds during the night, waking for the day between 5:30 and 7:30am (which is a whole 'nother issue! I can't handle the 5:30 mornings!), and having two one hour daytime naps around 9:30am and 2pm. Roughly.

Can anyone offer any solutions? I'm getting really frustrated and resentful of my beautiful girl. I spent a year of my older daughters life around the same age having sleep battles and I don't want to think that this is the beginning of a similar year.