*hand up in the air*

I'm another who had a wonderful sleeper... up until the same stage you are at. I did attachement parenting and co-slept and it worked so beautifully. Then things began to change and in hindsight I can see it is because DDs sleep patterns were changing and her cognition and interaction with the world was increasing but I wasn't changing the way she slept.

I was, like you, a walking zombie and going insane when everyone else's sleep problems seemed to be finally sorting themselves out! I tried to gently parent it out for months before I finally got help. It was not a healthy thing to do as I was a mess and both DD and my marriage suffered for it.

I also ended up at sleep school and it was a godsend. It was certainly not CIO or anything draconian by any means and was very much as Marydean posted. She has offered you wonderful advice in my opinion, and I am going to give her rep points for you!!! (ETA- argh, couldn't! Seems I have been giving her too much love also!)

The other little hint I have is find a way to approach this calmly with the firm belief that there is a solution. What worked for me was committing to it and giving the calm approach. I used to peel myself out of bed with dread when she stirred at night to try to re-settle and flop down again as soon as she did only to have to get up again. That was pure torture. When I used Marydean's technique () I approached it differently. I would go in and do the initial settle, calm words to let DD know I was there and everything was alright then tell her to go back to sleep, leave and go and put the living room lights on, the kettle on and fire up the computer. Having another reason to be up - a cup of tea or the internet - really helped my sanity rather than sitting there listening to her and thinking about bed or worse, falling back into bed listening! I would only be gone for a minute, then go back for more calm words and settling, or in her case placing her back down from standing. It was all about the repetition and me letting her know that I was there, everything was alright, but that she had to go to sleep. It worked. I was amazed that with the calmness, I never had to leave her long to cry - I would describe it more of a winge mostly and she really quickly learnt to lie herself back down and very shortly, to resettle.

I will admit that in the beginning there were howls of protest which certainly sounded angry and I did respond to them too, in just the same way. I never left her for more than 5 min (I used the clock on the computer!) I realised that the howls were because she was a smart cookie and was telling me that she didn't want to sleep. My reasurrance regularly was telling her I understood, but not sleeping was not on. I was teaching her to sleep in the gentlest way I could while still being effective IYKWIM.

I also agree with Marydean's statements
This is not the same as controlled crying where the child is left to cry for ever increasing periods of time, with much less reassurance and comforting. It's also important not to try to do this sort of routine when your child is unwell, when they need extra holding and parental contact than usual.
Very true. One of the big problems with CIO is the length of time babies are left and the lack of appropriate comfort. This causes long term elevated stress hormones in the brain which are detrimental to the developing brain.On the other hand if your baby is in a stressful situation (maybe such as the anger I was describing earlier) for a short period of time but you offer reasonable and realistic comfort to help them calm down, you are in fact teaching them ways to moderate this stress. I hope that makes sense... it is late and I should be in bed!

I also did the same thing during day sleeps and spent that week or so close to home without too many outings (as much a routine as possible) to really cement the process.

All the best, I hope you can work this out quickly as it is very distressing to deal with. No judgement, you obviously have your LOs best interests at heart and you can't ask for much more than that in a mum. Babies are all so different and the hard and fast rules of "you must do this" or "you must never do that" just don't really cut it in the real world. You have to find the happy medium and do what feels right for you when you have good information behind you.