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We did, twice. The first time he was still under a year and it was easier. The second time he was 18 months and it was harder because he could talk and I felt so guilty hearing him wail mommy.

We didn't sleep train. However, when my LO got into the habit of nursing to sleep (and so upset to let go), we used a technique called the Pantley Gentley Removal. It worked really well for my 15 month old and was so much easier than I expected. I read about it in the No Cry Sleep Solution.

Basically, you remove her from the breast when she slows down, she will get upset, you let her continue, remove again when she slows, repeat. At first it took about 5 or 6 times then she accepted it and went to sleep. Within a week she would just let go and roll over to go to sleep with no fuss or repetition. It was surprisingly easy.

YES! We initially sleep trained at around 10.5 months which wasn't too bad at all (2 nights total), had to re-train (though only took one night) the first night of our trip to Europe at 11 months, then when we got back from Europe her sleep was bad again but we didn't re-train (stupidly) and waited until it got worse and worse and worse over several months (until it was at the point you described, where she wouldn't even nurse to sleep and would wake up the moment she was put down in the crib asleep, and waking 4-5 times a night).

We then finally re-sleep trained at 16 months, which was incredibly hard--2 super terrible nights and 7 total nights of yuck. Much harder than the first time, and I wish we hadn't let it go so long. Turns out our nanny never stopped rocking/bottle-feeding LO to sleep for every nap, so almost as soon as we would sleep train, the backslide would start again. So by 18 months--less than 2 months after the awful 16 month sleep training--her night sleep was back to AWFUL again and she had to be rocked to sleep every night again. Ugh.

I am now 31 weeks pregnant, LO is 22 months, and I can't handle an hour rocking LO to sleep every night and then 4-5 night wakings anymore. So last week I staged an intervention - calling in a pricey sleep consultant (referred by our ped) to meet at our home with my husband (who can't stand to hear her cry and rushes in to bring her to our bed within 1 minute of any peep at night) and our nanny (who also can't bear to hear her cry and has rocked/fed her to sleep for all naps since she was 3 months old). That was last week.

Let me tell you, best money I ever spent! I think it was critical to get all three of us on the same page, which never was going to happen with me just reading sleep books and telling the other two skeptics what I think we should do. They needed a neutral third party with lots of experience to tell them what needed to be done, and to sit us all down together and get us all on the same page.

And it worked so quickly and so beautifully - it was much easier than when we did it at 16 months, way less crying and success much faster. Last night she wished DH a happy father's day as he left her room after bedtime routine (not even any whining!) and she slept from 7:40pm - 7:15am without even a peep. Miracle! And she wakes up now happy and singing (before she always woke up crying). We're all like a different family! I haven't gotten this much sleep since I got pregnant, and LO clearly, in retrospect, was sleep-deprived too!

Good luck! This is all a long way of saying that re-sleep training is probably necessary periodically, though it could be necessary more often if there's something still going on (like never nap-training, which is what happened with us) that means they're not fully "cooked" the first time you sleep-train.