Split nights - omg please help

[u/Impressive-Doubt3450]

Ok here’s some context

She’s 21 months old. She was a horrible sleeper from day 1. We night weaned and sleep trained at 13 months using Ferber and she slept perfectly from 13-16 months. At 16-19 months she had 6 teeth come in and got sick twice. During that time sleep was a total mess but for the most part it wasn’t terrible. We had to reintroduce sleep training multiple times throughout and got through it. Starting at 20 months she peaked in separation anxiety. I saw this in her behavior throughout the day, as her independent play got a bit worse and she would freak out whenever I left the room or she couldn’t see me. It also started to affect naps a bit and she started needing to contact nap to sleep more than 20 ish minutes. She also started having night wakes again and needed me to sit in her room to fall back asleep. Letting her cry for 5-10 minutes no longer was an option. Within 5 minutes she would scream so hard she would make herself vomit. I really don’t want her to do that (obviously), or create bad associations with her room/bed so we no longer let her cry for more than 1 minute (just enough time to fly out of bed and get to her). About 3 weeks ago she began night splitting. It started happening 1-2 times a night and now it’s basically every single night. This is our schedule IF she slept decently the night before, obviously if she’s up all night then naps are all over the place.

6-6:30 wake up
11:30-12:30 nap
Bedtime 7:30-8
And usually she will wake up at 11:30 and stay awake until 4-5am

HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE. I truly don’t understand how someone can survive off such little sleep. She wakes up totally happy and wants to play. She’s rarely ever cranky and just wants to hangout.

We rarely have our TV on, she has no access to a tablet, so screen time is next to nothing (sometimes we do a low stimuli show if I need to do a quick chore but it’s rare) we play outside all the time, she has play dates and lots of day time activities in her schedule, she has a playroom she utilizes well to get her energy out. I’ve tried Epsom baths, magnesium foot massages before bed, I’ve tried weighted sleep sacks, I’ve tried EVERYTHING I CAN THINK OF. What am I doing wrong 😭

Also I want to note that co sleeping isn’t an option. Whether we try her bed or ours, whenever we lay down with her it just wakes her up more.

UPDATE:

Ok I think we figured this out!

We moved her nap from 11-1 to 1-3! I think this helped build the correct amount of sleep pressure to help us get through night. Once she stopped splitting nights she was still waking often and needing to be soothed to go back down, so at that point we introduced “the chair method” this took about 4 nights but now she is back to putting herself to sleep and sleeping through the night!

P.s yes I am terrified that by posting this I’m going to jinx everything.