Any advise/ encouragement is welcome
My 14 months old sweet baby is very high needs, she has been contact sleeping for all her naps. She is breastfed to sleep, always has been. The 4 months sleep regression hit us hard, but with the help of my husband we have managed to keep her overnight feeds to mostly 2. Well close to 8 months she started to reject him at night, so much so that she panicks with him, clings to me with desperation, starts to cry so hard that she actually has difficulty breathing and chokes on her own saliva. If i get her she goes straight to the boob. I want to point out that their relationship is very beautiful, she just refuses to sleep with him anymore. We cosleep but at nights i many times simply fall asleep with her in my arms, at the breast, due to exhaustion. She is a very big baby, hard to manage. She has nights where she wakes every 2 hours/ 90 minutes. She gives me 3 hours chunks on good nights.
I am depleted. I kept hoping she will just turn the page at one point, but she hasn t... Around february we have discovered a severe iron defficiency, she is taking supplements and we will be checking soon if things improved. She is barely tasting solids, always has been. She is only walking supported for now, but she is very socially and emotionally engaged with us, and communicative in her own way.
I have tried making small changes but to no avail. Big changes i can t do... she protests very hard and i doubt her crying like that is the solution. I am worried though because she will have to start daycare at one point, i am depleted, i also have chronic health issues and if my condition worsens for some reason, i might have to abruptly wean her at some point, an idea that simply horrifies me.
She is stil on two naps, with wake windows 3.5/4/up to 4.5 which pushes bedtime last but when she only had one nap she either woke up every hour at night and then had a ~4 hour wake window after 1 /2 am (4 out of 4 times in 10 days so it was not a coincidence, OR, best case scenario, she had a false start where it took me an hour of nursing rocking walking singing to her all at once to get her back to sleep and then woke up every hour for the reminder of the night, so it is safe to say she is not ready for 1 nap which is why i have started capping first nap (so that she leaves enough room for a second nap; i usually wake her up at 12.30 pm the latest)
Can i stil hope things will improve for us?