DD (8 months old) was a wonderful sleeper, until a bunch of things like: travel, 4 month regression, more travel, sickness... and then all her good sleeping habits went down the drain.
Her naps are all over the place. I'm following the No-cry sleep solution like we did with DS, and doing whatever is necessary for her to nap regularly and for more than an hour. However she can't seem to nap for more than 45 minutes like 90% of the time. I sometimes rush to her when I hear her waking up and get her to fall back asleep but a lot of times I fail. Her nap schedule is a mess with coming and going in the car to drop-off/ pick-up DS from school, and then other days I take her to OT and have to wake her when we arrive if she fell asleep in the car. But I'm kinda forcing her into a 2 nap schedule so things work better for us. But the bottom line is that on most days she naps for a total of maybe 90 minutes in the whole day, I know this is not enough. What can I do? She's a light sleeper like me, and when a random noise doesn't wake her, DS does (he's a noisy kid).
Then at night, she goes down easily on most days. She's used to being put down drowsy but awake and doesn't fuss or anything, some days she takes longer to fall asleep, but I always put her down awake. But then the first few hours she keeps waking up or half-waking up and crying, like every 30 min or so. I go in give her the paci, settle her back on her side (she's a side sleeper) and she immediately goes back to sleep. Then she wakes up to nurse 2-3 times during the night. And on some nights she refuse to go back to sleep after her midnight feed and plays and babbles for up to 2 hours! It's not every night, and I can't figure out why she does that. When she does this I bring her into my bed and basically ignore her and try to sleep until she falls asleep.
We planned on moving her into her room in Jan. but then she got sick and I let her stay in our room until she was better so we'd all get some rest. I tried putting her in her room the last 2 nights, thinking maybe it would be quieter and she'd sleep better, but it was the same thing. Like every night I ended up bringing her into my bed in the middle of the night because I just couldn't keep getting up every 20-30 minutes. I also try very hard to space the nursings, giving her the paci, cuddling her, rocking her as long as possible. She goes to bed at 7 pm and wakes up between 6:30-7 am. She really can't stay up later than this, by 6:45 pm she's really fussy and tired (even if she naps at 4:30 pm).
Sorry if this makes no sense, I'm so tired I feel I can't even think straight. Plus DS wakes up to use the bathroom at least once every night and asks me to walk him back to his room. DH travels every week, so I get to do this all on my own.
So, any tips? How do I get her to stay asleep?