Been there, done that... still doing that!
The one thing my parents always talk about when I was a kids was how I didn't sleep. Well, it's payback time, I guess!
I really remember how hard it was for me to sleep as kid and turn off my brain. I also remember having many arguments with daycare provides and the people at my preschool about how my parents never made me take a nap.
My poor parents probably just long gave up the fight
So, yeah, DD switched to one nap a day at about 8-9 months. Now at a year she's cutting down her 1 nap a day to 45-60 minutes. The nice thing is, is that she's sleeping better at night and not fighting as much to fall asleep so personally I'd rather have less naptime and more nighttime sleep (she'll still go 11-12 hours at night unless she's teething).
We cosleep also and have no intention on stopping anytime soon. Honestly, I love having her there to cuddle and she sleeps pretty well once I'm in bed with her. I DO have a bedtime, though. As in, she'll wake up once every 1-2 hours before I go to bed. Eventually she decides I have to sleep too (around midnight) and won't stay asleep unless I stay in bed with her. I guess it makes sure I get enough sleep at least.
DD still nurses to sleep. For her naps we just let her go down when she's ready but make sure that she doesn't sleep past 3 pm because otherwise she won't be in bed by 8pm. At night DH and I both go into the bedroom and lay with her while I nurse her to sleep. Dh goes with because if he's not there she just wants to go out to the livingroom and play with him the entire time.
Honestly, we don't believe in sleep training for a number of reasons but that doesn't mean we take no sleeping lying down.
We use a noise machine (strongly recommend that!) and we change DD's diaper during every nightwaking if she needs it. She use to pee on the potty at night (and was waking up dry!) but between teething and a language explosion that she's going through she's been refusing that.
About the milk thing... DD was doing something similar. For awhile she kept saying she had to go potty before bed just to delay bedtime. Eventually we decided she could go ONCE after that we just told her no and that it was bed time. Especially since normally she didn't really need to pee and was just playing on the potty instead.
Oh, and we've totally had the nightmares/night terrors. We got the first around 3 months and it was one of the scariest things ever! They tend to happen around teething time/growth spurts/colds so normally when she's not feeling up to par.
One last thing... we switched her out of the pack and play during her naps/before we went to bed and just let her sleep in the bed. I think she actually was afraid of it because she'd wake up hysterical. When she wakes up in our bed she simply sits up and calls out. She doesn't seem scared at all anymore. We switched her at around 9 months to the bed once she learned how to get out safely by herself. That also helped to sleep much better!
Sorry for the long answer, I hope there's something in there that helps!
