My toddler wont sleep on her own anymore

mrsberries

:Im at my wits end. Ever since we came back from holidays in September my 20 month old wont go to bed in her room. We put her down about 7 (we have varied the time over the last few months) and spend the evening listening to her scream on the monitor and going up every few minutes to read/sing/reason with her. Often I relent and take her to bed with me or the odd time we do succeed in getting her asleep. She then wakes up several times during the night, sometimes we dont go in to her and she'll settle herself, or she might fully wake up until one of us goes in and either brings her downstairs for a while or take her into bed with us. Im now 3 months pregnant and utterly exhausted with the constant broken sleep, stressful full time job and the nightly bedtime battles.

We have tried a few sessions with an Osteopath to make sure she wasnt in pain and at one stage it was a case of her eye teeth cutting through but now its pure bad habits caused by us.

I sleep trained her succesfully at 6 months so know that everything we are doing is wrong by giving in, but the tricks I learnt from the book I read worked better on a baby than a toddler. I know the answer is to stop taking her into bed but its easier said than done, plus I think the fact she only gets us for an hour every evening is possibly contributing to this. Breaks my heart.

Does anyone have any words of wisdom or experience of this. Or can anyone recommend a good book which helped them. I need to get some rest before June :eek::eek:

How Strange

mrsberries we've just come through (crossing fingers that it's really over!) a terrible 2-2.5 months of sleeping with our son. We never sleep trained or anything but he's generally great to go down in the evening and would usually sleep through.

However October, November and part of December were a nightmare. He'd go to bed ok but might start screaming half an hour later and then it could be every few hours for the night. Then we went through the 4-5am wakings where he'd refuse to go back to sleep. I'm also pregnant and I was at my wits end.

I think there's a big sleep regression around 19 months and my son was cutting his lower canines for ages. The doctor said those were particularly painful teeth to cut.

All I can say is keep at it. We gave him teethdex at night for about 6 weeks which I felt terrible about but it was the only chance of all of us getting some sleep. He was totally exhausted himself and being overtired seemed to compound the problem. After 6 weeks of teethdex we switched to a combination of calpol and nurofen. Thankfully he's back sleeping again and hasn't had any medication at bed time for about 3 weeks.

I don't know if that's any help to you but just to reassure you it seems to be 'normal' as I was talking to parents of other 19-22 month olds who went through pretty much the same thing.

littlemissfixit

I hear ya! When I was 8 mths pregnant my then 17 mth old toddler started to play up at night. She was going off ok but would wake up screaming crying at any time of the night. The first time I thought something was definately wrong with her so I went to sooth her but she would start again every time I went to leave her room again. Because I was so tired at that stage too I did take her in bed the next night when she wasnt settling and after that she done it every night. I couldn't let it go on, with a newborn due any week so I done a control crying starting by going in and telling her everything was ok and patting her just a minute, then waited 5 min before going back, 10/15/20 min etc... without saying anything to her, or picking her anything. First night went to the 20 min, following to 15min, third night 10 min and that was it... It was really not as bad as I thought it would be. Now she had only been doing it for about a week, so if you have been giving in for a long time, I dont know it might be longer, but make a plan and stick to it, there is no two ways about it in my opinion!

mrsberries

THanks How Strange, that is reassuring. I do reckon my daughter is cutting the lower canines too so could be part of it also. My husband is against using Teedex or drugs but we have a bottle and I use it occasionally. Tonight I gave her a dose of it at 6.30 as my husband is out for the night and Im feeling ill. She still fought the tiredness until 8.30 when I relented and brought her back downstairs. As soon as she was in my arms she fell asleep, she just seems to need our arms and I would find it hard not to give her that comfort.

pwurple

Bleurg, mine has just started the same thing over the past few nights. We have had a big upheaval in the last while, with hr dad being away with work for a few weeks, and us moving house, and me falling and breaking some bones. So I thought it was maybe that, but she settled fine the first few days we were here. She has all the canines and molars a few months... So it's not teeth for us.

I suspect she just wants to be big... Like us, and stay up late. She is imitating absolutely every tiny thing we do at the moment. Hanging up clothes, sweeping floor, wants to be driving the car, not sitting in the back. Sitting on the loo and flushing it. I can see she is hanging tired, but will not go to sleep if one of us is not also there pretending to go to sleep. It took 2 hours last night. Hmm.