Hi J.- You can start with making sure that your daughter is still a little bit awake after nursing and before you put her down to sleep. I found this easier to do at night when my husband was home to take the baby from my arms. The hand-off was planned to interrupt that peaceful bliss of slumber until he could lay the baby down, and the crying protests for more nursing just weren't effective on Dad. The basic idea is to teach your daughter that she can fall asleep on her own in her crib without having you as her pacifier. It's sounds like that's what she's used to doing . It's what's natural for her. Think of it this way... you go to sleep in your comfortable bed with your pillow and blankets. You stir occasionally during the night to turnover, moving in and out of sleep cycles. If your blanket and pillow were suddenly gone, you'd wake up instead of just rolling over, because your environment that you had when you fell asleep had changed and you're aware of the change.
The full-on "let 'em cry it out" method is very, very tough and it will backfire on you unless you know that you (and Dad or other caretakers) can hold strong, every night, for days or a week or more. If you cave-in after a long hear-breaking tantrum, then you've taught your daughter to cry harder and louder and longer to get what she wants. I found it easier to try a modified approach to crying it out with Dad putting the baby in the crib while still a little awake (which meant actually waking the baby to then put him/her to sleep in the crib). Then its quick pick ups for comforting with soothing talk, then back down in the crib. Repeat...Repeat... Then, the cries changes from "pick me up" to "don't leave me alone here" so then we worked on laying the baby back down when he/she tried to get up, talked soothingly and lots of back pats. Next step is to move on to leaving the room while the baby is still just a little awake. This gentler method takes longer but it's easier on both parent and baby. Good Luck! Hope you can get some sleep yourself!