OP here. Thank you for all the suggestions. I will definitely look at those books and clinics. Thank you.

Try the multidisciplinary Behavioral Sleep Medicine Clinic (through the departments of Pulmonology/Psychology) at Children's National Medical Center. They are great and experienced with complex cases.

After reading the pp's I feel like I am writing in with the lazy mom's approach to sleep training, but I give melatonin at nap time, bed time and again (once) when ds wakes in the night (as long as I feel like a sufficient amount of time has passed, usually at least 4 hours). It's miserable; I know. Good luck.

I followed an adapted "Good Night, Sleep Tight" Kim West with my son who would wake up 6-8 times per night. Instead of the 2.5 weeks it was supposed to take, it took 2.5 months. It is all about helping your child self calm. So you need to start using the same words to help her self calm.
(I started at 14 months).

We never got the nap working given that method, just used motion to get the nap to happen. But my son learned to calm himself. I used words like "We are sleeping." "You need to stay calm or mommy is going to have to leave". If he was calm while I say in his room, I would say. You are doing a good job staying calm." I would read this book, it has solutions for ages up to age 5. You will probably have to adapt some, but the most important thing is that you teach your child to self calm. Everyone wakes up in the middle of the night, the key is to learn to calm yourself and go back to sleep.

As for a sleep study, my child has had that too. I didn't think he would get to sleep with all the stuff hanging out of his body, but he did around 9:00 pm and slept for a few hours and woke up. I was able to snuggle with him in his bed and get him back to sleep after about an hour. I think if I had gotten in his bed earlier, it wouldn't have taken so long. My child had a sleep study because of his adenoids, not because he woke up multiple times per night.

We also work on self calming during the day. If my child is upset, he needs to go to his room and calm himself. I'm not talking making a child self calm when he is hurt or sick, but if he got upset because I put the wrong something on or whatever he really wanted.

I recommend Annika Brindley. Annika's Little Sleepers. There is also a sleep center at Kennedy Krieger.

She is 2 1/2. Sleep training has never worked. We've tried the cry it out, the Ferber, etc. She takes no comfort in us trying to soothe her back to sleep - she either wants to play when she sees us or she is so out of it and angry that she continues to be mad/sad if we try to pick her up. She doesn't cuddle and has never been one to lay in bed with us or be rocked to sleep. She does like when we rub her back, it calms her crying down, but she has never gone back to sleep while we do this. And if we do it and walk out of the room, the crying returns. She has always had trouble sleeping, often awake for 1-2 hours during the night with frequent wakings (ever since infancy). Generally, we don't go into her room and we haven't really done anything for her since she was about 18 months (when we would sometimes give her a bottle if you couldn't self-soothe). Shortly after 18 months she starts sleeping on her belly and her sleep improved. She was able to rock on all 4's to self-soothe and put herself back to bed. About a month ago she got a cold and that made her sleep on her back and she can't seem to get back to her belly. When I try to roll her to her belly, she rolls right back, but she just lays on her back and flails/cries. It is heartbreaking. I wouldn't even mind holding her, rocking her, if it worked, but it doesn't (it is so much worse then). She eventually goes back to sleep on her own at night, but she'll usually cry for over an hour and she's been waking more at night and earlier in the morning and naps have decreased from about 75 min to 30 min (or less). We can't seem to get out of this bad cycle. Oh, and now when she wakes from the nap after 30 min, she is very upset, sometimes for up to an hour after. She clearly wants to sleep more, but is having trouble doing so. Thank you for your help! All suggestions welcome!

How old is she, exactly?

How old is your child? Have you tried any type of sleep training and had it fail or had any success? What do you do to help your child fall back to sleep. Has it gotten worse is is it always like this?

My daughter is not sleeping, waking up a lot from naps and nighttime sleep, very upset and unable to resettle. Seems a lot like a night terror, but I don't know that it is. She has had disrupted sleep since birth, always having long periods of being awake in the middle of the night (whether upset or not). Has anyone seen a sleep specialist and had any luck with them? I don't know if a sleep study is plausible for my daughter - I am sure she would tear the electrodes off and not be able to fall asleep. But, has a consult with a sleep specialist proven beneficial for anyone? Can you share your experiences and any interventions that were suggested/effective? We are already taking melatonin, but is there a specific brand (or time-release form) that seems most effective? Thank you!