Our 14 month old has never slept through the night and screams constantly

Hi everyone, my SO and I are on the brink of insanity due to the fact our daughter has never slept longer than 2-3 hour stretches at a time. Maybe a handful of times she slept 4-5 hours in a row, but that was an exception.She has the same bedtime and nap routine, falls asleep right away, and our routine has been approved and checked up by a sleep nurse (Dutch health specialist). But... the problem is, is that she does not stay asleep.We have literally tried EVERYTHING. She eventually cries herself back to sleep after a few minutes (and sometimes drinking water) But keeps waking up over and over. At first, we thought teething and gave her paracetamol... but you shouldn’t need to give paracetamol all the time. (In the Netherlands, paracetamol is pretty much the “treatment” for everything, it seems.)She’s always been a high needs child and full of energy. We have tried to focus on the positive aspects that she’s healthy and has a fun personality, but we’re reaching our wits ends in trying to feign a positive attitude that “Things will get better,” because they have not and, honestly, it’s hard to believe they will any time soon.As she’s gotten older, caring for her has gotten more and more difficult. This paired with severe, chronic sleep deprivation only makes parenting even more demanding. I feel awful writing this, but it’s hard to often find “joy” in parenting when we both feel so exhausted and alone.No one seems to understand our struggles and we get unsolicited, anecdotal advice left and right ... and criticism as if we haven’t done enough, tried everything, or sought out professional advice. It’s incredibly frustrating.Around the past few months our daughter has turned into this screaming, clingy unconsolable child. She fights and resists everything : changing her, dressing her, getting her out of the bath, feeding her, cleaning her up after eating, etc.Developmentally, the physicians say she’s doing well. She started walking at 10 months, is on the right developmental growth path, etc.We live in the Netherlands and, unlike the US, it’s very hard to just go see a pediatrician. All checkups are via a government run child healthcare organization and health issues that the child has are evaluated via the GP.Every single time we went for her checkups, we explained the fact she keeps waking up and seems like something (perhaps pain) is bothering her. But each time, the health care assistants never questioned / suggested it might be a physical health problem. We were often met with “Dat is jammer” (That’s too bad)Finally we just got a referral from our new GP to see a pediatrician, but now have to wait an entire month to be seen... which means another month of no-sleep-hell.This may come off as a bit of a desperate, sleep deprived rant, but please, if anyone has advice or has gone through something similar, I’m open to anything! Thank you.TL;DR:Daughter has never slept through the night, wakes up constantly, screams during the day. We’re going insane. The Dutch medical system isn’t proactively helpful. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2n4Bj7T