Night weaned now won't go into cot (long)

I've always fed DD to sleep, mostly in a chair by her bed, then transferred her into cot when she was asleep, if she is sick or having a bad night etc, I would cosleep in the spare room or our bed.

I have been wanting to night wean for ages, she still wakes once or twice and after a few bad nights decided to bite the bullet and do it. It worked well, DH got up to her for a week and she was fine to fall asleep on him, I can now get up to her and she is happy to fall asleep being rocked or cuddled, so the night weaning has worked well.

The problem is, we CANNOT get her back in the cot when she is asleep now, she immediately wakes and screams blue murder. She will fall asleep quickly and I usually wait 10mins til she is in a deep sleep ( this always worked well for me) but now as soon as she hits the cot she wakes and goes psycho. Dh or I end up in the spare room with her after trying for an hour +, she will then fall asleep next to me or DH quite happily. I had some success a few nights ago with just holding her hand thru the cot until she fell asleep but she will not even lie down to do this now, and ends up hysterical until we give up and go into bed with her.

Part of me wants to just let her cry in her cot until she falls asleep while I sit next to her but DH can't cope with hearing her cry for so long and it is creating a lot of tension in an already stressed relationship. He is going away for work soon for 3 weeks so I feel like trying it then. I would prefer to do it gently but I feel like every night it's getting worse.

I still BF to sleep at bedtimewhich is usually easy because she doesn't nap and is tired by then. I 'suspect' she might be getting molars but not sure, which obviously isn't helping. I can cope with broken sleep as I am used to it but both DD and DH are cranky from poor sleep, and it is driving me insane!

Anyone have any suggestions?
Should I try stopping feeding to sleep at bedtime and try to teach her to go to sleep herself?
Should I wait til DH goes away and go hardcore with letting her cry?
Should I take the rail off the cot and put a guard up so I can lie next to her to get her to sleep (this scares me in regard to her climbing out of bed)
I love not BFing overnight but feel like I created a new problem :-(

I'm on my phone so can't see your sig, how old is your DD? Mine was about 16 months when we took the side off the cot and put up a rail, DS is now the same age and we're doing the same this week.

We never had problems climbing out when she shouldn't, but if she did it was a lot safer than climbing over the side of the cot. It was actually really good in the mornings, she'd wake up, get out of bed and come down to our room - nicer for us! And with regard to your original question, it did make night time easier. We could lie with her if needed and it was easier to get out. Also easier to just hold her while sitting on the floor next to the bed.

I'd probably give it a go.

Cool thanks she's 2 years old. Might try it we have a guard rail.

Not sure how much help this will be... Spock was never in a cot with all 4 sides. She went from bassinet, to sidecar cot (one side completely removed against our bed. Then we moved her straight to a big bed, sorry I can't remember exactly what age she was....i know she was young for a big bed, like between 12 and 18months? Her bed has 2 height settings so it was low and we had a mattress on the floor for 6months, but she never fell out of bed. We kept the cot sidecared, and eventually a single bed side cared to our bed. As she got older we would go in to her less and less if she woke up and she would then come into us, and sleep in the single bed. Since quark has arrived, we moved the single bed away from our bed, but still I. Our room. She has her bed and her room and starts in there, and if wants to she is welcome into the spare bed. Over time it is happening later and later in the night she comes into us, some nights she doesn't come into us until morning time (after 7am in our house)
Like I said, not sure how much help....we just did a lot of consistency and perseverance....

We went through pretty well the exact same thing with DS1.
We tried letting him cry since it got to the point where it was taking 2 hours to get him back into bed and he was waking up every 2.5 hours and I was just shattered. It worked very quickly, but only lasted a few days.
What worked for us in the end was a slow process of weaning him off sleeping on me. This was after we'd moved him into a big bed. I would cuddle him until he was pretty sleepy, then I would lie him down in his bed and hold his hand (after having talked to him about what we were going to do). If he got really upset I would pick him up and hold him again but always lie him back down. Eventually he would go to sleep in his bed with me holding his hand. Then we shifted slowly to going to sleep with me sitting next to him. Then I got further and further away. Finally I left the room. I think it took about a year in total to get him from only sleeping on me to going to sleep on his own in bed. But there were many little improvements along the way.
Good luck!

Thanks for the replies, we took the side off the cot last night.
She was initially sceptical but I lay in the cot next to her and read a book which she LOVED, then fed to sleep quickly, and extricated myself somehow. So a win there.
Unfortunately she woke about 12 and things went a bit haywire culminating in a exorcist style tantrum, I ended up feeding her to sleep in the spare bed, so night weaning fail. I might have to accept feeding to sleep until DH goes away and I will have another shot at cutting the feeds. She is having a lot of massive tantrums at the moment so I think there have been a fair few minor changes which are unsettling her, might need to go slower.