Apologise for length of this post in advance. We have an 18 month old little girl who has reflux which is under control with medication, however as it took forever to get it under control she has a sleeping problem that is likely behavioural. We won?t do controlled crying under any circumstances!!! And are out of ideas on what to do???

The beginning of the night is the main problem as she can wake on average 4 times in the space of 2 hours (a few months ago we did a 24 hour PH test which required us to log her wakings, she woke 20 times that night. In our sleep-deprived state we?d long since stopped working out how many times she had woken and were shocked at this result). Our routine is the same every night - we put her in the cot (in our room) at the beginning of the night, but once we go to bed and she wakes, she comes into bed with us and usually sleeps much better. So the question is in all the reading I have done on co-sleeping and how well its works and the benefits etc? no one ever mentions what they do before the parents go to bed. Are their babies in a cot, or in the bed alone, or do you just go to bed when bub does????

Our issue is when she wakes she doesn?t even look up or open her eyes (we have a camera in the room) she just starts to full on cry. It usually stops within a minute or so of me picking her up, unlike when she had reflux she would continue to scream for 30 minutes or so. We have tried so many things from so many ?no cry sleep books? and nothing stops this or suggests how to fix it.

As a result of months of her being in pain we now rock her to sleep. We originally for about 8 months had her in our bed falling asleep on her own (me still in the room lying a meter away from her not touching her). Now we have the reflux under control we think that the rocking may be causing part of the sleep issue. If I try and put her down awake in the cot, she will just keep standing up thinking it?s a game, this will go on for hours, eventually I pick her up till she falls asleep. How do I go about getting her to go to sleep without me rocking ? something that does not involve her crying????? I?m sorry I have so many questions I don?t know where to start or stop?.

Background: We diagnosed her as having reflux at around 4 weeks old, took her to our paediatrician who said she was too young to medicated. We managed it with natural colic mixture, raised basinet and change table, all was good she slept wonderfully. At around 5 months the throwing up stopped and we had never heard of ?silent reflux? so when things got steadily worse (especially in the sleep department) we assumed it was a sleep problem, then night terrors, and separation anxiety ? all diagnoses from health nurse, pharmacist and sleep nanny. Everyone around us said it could not be reflux she was too old. By 8 ? months she was waking up every 30 minutes for most of the night. Finally after lots of internet searching still knowing something was not right, we diagnosed ?silent reflux? ourselves. At 9 and a half months our doctor on our diagnoses subscribed Zantac at 2 ml a day. Little changed. We booked an appointment with a paediatrician, 3 months later we go in to see him. By this point she was so anaemic and iron deficient (we later found from excessive bleeding in her oesophagus) he took one look at her and said that was the problem, especially with the bad pica with eating paper and books. So we waited 3 weeks for the magical improvement from iron liquid but nothing changed. So we went back. We refused to leave until she was prescribed something else. They gave us Losec instead and finally there was an improvement. We were eventually referred to The Royal Children?s Hospital in Melbourne. The specialists there instantly recognised the symptoms that we were describing and officially diagnosed her with bad Gastro-Oesophageal Reflux Disease (GORD) ? thank goodness someone had taken us seriously. She is currently on 10mg Losec and 2ml Zatac in the morning and again in the afternoon. We have the reflux under control, no more screaming every 15 to 30 minutes ALL NIGHT long for 30 minutes at a time or more. She is no longer iron deficient and all the other symptoms are also gone and she is growing properly again (she was down to 3rd percentile in height and weight for her age at one point, she put on a kilo in 3 weeks once on Losec, she has only just reached 10 kilos) ? but we are left with the latent sleep issues! It?s no surprise though as she was in terrible pain for nearly a year.

I think we should go back to putting her to sleep in our bed at the beginning of the night, I think it will be easier to get her to lie down and gradually get her to go to sleep without me rocking her. However my hubby thinks nothing will change and she will still wake up as she wants us there and nothing will fix that?????

Any help offered will be appreciated. Thank you.