I'm not sure about the rules on this exchange but I would recommend The Sleepeasy Solution by Jennifer Waldburger. We went through a number of different technique's and books (mostly more of the no-cry gentle methods). This book took us from an 8 month old was up 3-4 times per night to sleeping through the night in around 1 week at a terrible time for sleep training
- Mom was going back to work
- Just back from vacation with a time difference
- Bub had found her legs so was starting to pull herself up in the crib.
The basic premise is
Set the stage for sleep
- Have a consistent bed time routine, dark room, white noise (if using, we did)
- Put the baby down at a good hour so they aren't overtired (our bedtime is 7-7:30pm
- Remove sleep dependencies (things the baby relies on to put her to sleep such as a pacifier, these can wake her up or make it more difficult for her to put herself back to sleep if she wakes up.
Get the baby to sleep
Put the baby to bed awake
Check in at 5min, 10min, 15min until baby falls asleep (after you hit 15min check in every 15min if required).
Keep interaction minimal at check in. Tell her you love her and she needs to sleep but no physical interaction
Keep the baby asleep
At 1 year the baby can go all night without eating so you need to cutout night feedings and teach the baby to put herself back to sleep
- Have a set schedule for nighttime feeding based on what she is currently doing.
- Each night cut the time/volume of each feeding down (using breastfeeding and time since that's what my wife was doing) the schedule would look something like this
+-------------+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+--------+
| | Night 1 | | Night 2 | | Night 3 | |
+-------------+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+--------+
| | Time | Length | Time | Length | Time | Length |
| Bedtime | 7:30pm | | 7:30pm | | 7:30pm | |
| 1st Feeding | 10:30pm | 8min | 10:30pm | 6min | 11:30pm | 6min |
| 2nd Feeding | 1:00am | 6min | 1:00am | 4min | 2:30pm | 4min |
| 3rd Feeding | 3:30am | 4min | 3:30am | 2min | | |
| Wake | 6:30am | | 6:30am | | 6:30am | |
+-------------+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+--------+
- Each night the feeds get shorter until they are dropped altogether
- When the baby wakes up don't feed her get her back to sleep using the nighttime check in routine. You should be waking the baby up for feedings
- Feeding should be on your schedule and not a reason to not put herself back to sleep
Overall although I've provided a summary (which should give you an indicator if its something you are willing to try) I'm sure there are important points I have missed and would highly recommend reading the book.
Obviously this isn't the only technique that works but it did for us. Hopefully you will find your solution soon.