Help! My 8.5 month old simply doesn't sleep

[amgills]

Hi,
My 8.5 month old has never been a big sleeper. She doesn't nap, and wants to nurse alllllllll night ( which, because we co-sleep, has become a habit - which would be all right but I'm getting less and less sleep- and more and more tired). She slept alright until she was about 4 months old and then started waking up all the time, fussy to be nursed. I spend all night tossing and turning, switching sides, etc. She did sleep through the night a few times before the mysterious 4 month mark, so I know she's able to. I really follow a Dr. Sears approach - it doesn't feel right to me to cry it out, and I have been trying to break her sleep association by rocking her to sleep instead, which works a lot of the time, but when I do that, she wakes every 1.5 hours and neither my partner nor I get ANY sleep - she cries and cries and cries -and he has to wake up early to work. Does anyone have any suggestions? Has anyone tried the "sleep in another room and let the other partner soothe them" approach? I would love to get her on a bit more of a schedule. Thank you so much for any suggestions or feedback!

[blessedwithboys]

It's way too early to start a schedule of any kind; heck, I'm 33 and I don't eat or sleep on a schedule! LOL

If rocking to sleep instead of nursing got her to STTN, I guess that would be fine, but you want to be very careful about limiting access to the breast at this tender age.

There are things you can do to try to make the room an environment more conducive to sleep:

keep the room quite cool
burn lavender oil
white noise or ocean wave recording, etc...
some have success with keeping the room dark, but my ds1 only ever slept in bright light due to the need to be completely sensory overloaded to settle down

Honestly, though, what you describe sounds developmentally appropriate, and more than likely, it will improve with time and patience. Hang in there!