I can honestly say that Aidyns sleep issues have become a lot more prominent AFTER he turned 12 months old... which has been a bit of a shock for me to be honest.

He is almost 2 years old now yet he will not sleep through the night any more than 1 night out of 7 on average.
For another 2 nights out of 7 he will only wake up once and we will usually just bring him to bed with us, which is actually fairly uncomfortable as our bed is way too small for 3 of us, but on these night he will usually go back to sleep without a fuss - he obviously just wants to be with us.
And for the other 4 nights per week he will wake up more than twice during the night, and this involves screaming tantrums where he doesnt want to lie down anywhere (not even in our bed) and he only want us to stand up and cuddle/hold him. He wont even let us sit with him on our laps heaven forbid... and it gets very tiring to be standing and rocking a 14kg toddler at 3am in the morning!

I can handle having one bad night, and even two... but anymore than 2 of those nights in a row, and I am a snarling, depressed wreck! I become obsessed with sleep, and its all I will think about, and I will take naps during the day when I really should be doing housework or studying, and I get cranky at DP whenever we go to bed because he will want to chat and snuggle and I snap at him that I'm not interested and would rather sleep! How terrible is that... he must think I'm pretty mean. But then I am very resentful of the fact that he does not attend to Aidyns crying/tantrums during the night... at all... not even on weekends. So I dont think he understands at all how draining it is!

Aidyn's a funny one cause I really cant put a label on him as to whether he is a good or bad sleeper, and I cant really say that his sleeping difficulties atm are related to him having a really strong personality? ... Because for most of his life he has been a really good sleeper and a really placid baby in general. I think his sleep disturbances are really just related to his development and becoming a toddler, because in the past 6 months or so is when they have really become more noticeable.
Sure, he went through rough patches when he was much younger, but they never usually lasted longer than a month or two, and we were always lucky enough to be able to find a gentle solution that worked for all of us (such as taking the side off his cot and using it as an extension of our bed).
However now at this age it has become so much more challenging (and frustrating!) to try and help him through this stage, because it seems that on these bad nights we try EVERYTHING, yet nothing works...
So yeah... atm I am just putting it down to his age and development, and am going to hang on in hope that surely it will get better.... hopefully sooner rather than later! [-o<