Toddler sleep training?? Post Reply

[TripleTrouble]

Hello

I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on the following matter:

Our daughter is now 2 years and 4 months and has been a great sleeper for the last year and a half (the first seven months were very tough and then followed by interrupted sleep on and off, we think due to teething, up until she was about a year old).

Her little brother is due in less than eight weeks (!) and she's just started waking up 3 times or more during the night, each time immediately jumping out of her toddler bed to run, crying, into the hallway and into our room. I'm shattered. It doesn't help that I'm not on mat leave for another month. Help!!!

Settling her for nap times and bedtime is also a real challenge resulting in us having to coax her with stories/books etc to sit in her bed and wait until she eventually drops off to sleep - only for her to wake up again a few hours later.

We have tried all sorts of things including putting her back to bed without speaking or eye contact (this was a complete failure, each time resulting in HOURS of tears and sleepless running around, as much as 5
+ hours until we gave in and let her sleep with us), night lights, sleeping in our bed, putting her to bed later, skipping nap times etc.

I am really very worried, especially since the new baby will be arriving soon and I'm already freaking out about not sleeping again for months on end.

Our routine is now to stay with her for an hour (or more) until she falls asleep at bedtime (skipping nap time as needed, she usually naps at nursery) and do the same again in the middle if the night (once or twice). If she wakes up in the morning (which she has been doing every night now for two weeks) at about 4am/5am we let her sleep with us for a couple of hours, just to get SOME sleep.

I'm sleeping badly anyway due to the pregnancy so any helpful tips would be much appreciated!!

I suggested getting a sleep trainer/consultant but mu husband is dead against that, not sure why.

Anyone else had any similar experiences?

Thanks!

[singingkettle]

Hi There,

I have just come across your post from last year, i am going through exactly the same thing with my 2 year 4 month old, is your daughter sleeping better? how long did it last for and what did you do?
I'm expecting my 2nd baby soon and getting no sleep and starting to worry!

look forward to hearing about any tips/advice you may have

thank you:-)

[susies]

You poor thing,

I can only imagine how tired you must be feeling, especially with another one on the way. You will probably get lot of advice from parents, which may or may not help you. I had a similar situation and the only thing I could do was try and exhaust my daughter during the day, but then she still woke up several times during the night - I did not know whether it was night terrors, or being over active during the day, but I do remember being TOTALLY exhausted and at the end of my tether.

My DD was younger than yours, but I think that the only way I eventually sorted it, was to convince my husband ( who was also against getting a sleep consultant), to get the help of a marvellous sleep trainer/parent coach ( sounds silly, but I think my daughter was picking up on my nervous exhaustion and frustration and that was not helping the situation, and my 'parent coach ' was an invaluable source of mentoring and guidance for me during this time.)

What I did was get my sleep trainer to do an hours consultation with myself and my husband and it brought him round to the idea of getting her to help us through the night, so we got her in for a few nights and she totally got my daughter into a great sleep routine. She saved my sanity!!

Am sure she would just have an initial conversation with you if you contact her, she has some really simple quick tips to try and is such a calm and lovely person to work with.

I cannot recommend her highly enough.

Her name is Heidi and she can be contacted via her company The Parent and Baby Coach as well as her email

heidi@theparentandbabycoach.com

Good luck and I wish you all the best

xx

[TripleTrouble]

Hello
Oh I feel for you, so tough. I'm pleased to be able to tell you that, at least in our case, it seemed like an eternity but in the end was less than three weeks until she slept beautifully again. Nap times took another couple of weeks to be settled back into the old routine again.

I had lots of different advice but, in hindsight, I think the most effective thing we did was applying the 'tough love' principle, consistently. ie we picked one thing we thought we could handle and thought would eventually work and stuck with it. In our case, I simply couldn't deal with staying by her bedside to let her fall asleep (1hr plus usually when she went to bed and every time she woke up, every three hours or so!) plus coaxing her back to bed o bed in the first place plus hubby travelling and me being heavily pregnant.... Anyway, I am digressing. we decided that we had to be tough and took it in turns taking over the night time wakings. I counted one bed time that I sent her back into her room well over 70 times!! (I stayed out on the landing and just kept on sending her back to bed, as calmly as I could).

Two things I believe also helped:
One evening my sister was babysitting as we had a prior commitment and I felt awful as I thought my sister would have to handle the usual night time horrors whilst we were out having a fabulous time. Funnily enough our daughter went to bed without too much trouble and it was somewhat of a turning point. Might be worth considering having someone she knows but also a little removed from the normal routine to take over for an evening to break the habit, so to speak.

The other thing, a little random but TOTALLY saved us , were her dollies. I noticed she was rather attached to them and got upset one bedtime when she thought I was taking them away from her. They turned out to be our saviours. (Couldn't leave door open due to cat, or lights on since she'd wake up and kick off anyway, esp if we turned them off) but no danger in her sleeping with a cuddly toy or dolly of course. Sooo we introduced the rule that she would get them as a reward for going to bed nicely and if she cried we'd take them away and returned them when she stopped. Seemed harsh at first but did the trick so we were all happy bunnies within two days hooray!

Not sure if your daughter has anything similar, perhaps a teddy or toy. But even if not all I can say is to hang on in there, be consistent and tough - it doesn't do anyone any good if you are not.

Good luck, am keeping my fingers crossed that you work out something that works soon!! X

PS: I tried contacting a few sleep consultants but they either only dealt with newborns/babies or didn't even respond. I would certainly have spent whatever necessary to try that route as was at my wits' end but as it turned out it was actually not as long as it felt and we managed to work it out.

[singingkettle]

Hi

Thank you both for taking the time to comment, i really appreciate it.

I have finally had a result Little one has slept through the night the last 3 nights, phew.. feeling relieved and i hope it continues.
I did toughen up and although i did some head rubbing (5 minutes) it seems to have worked, we've even managed to close the door a little so progress has been made. Little one developed a stinking cold after i had originally posted which has only just gone the last 2 days, perhaps that contributed to the constant waking up in the run up to the cold, as he also had very high temp.

Well i'm hopeful to get some good sleep over the next couple of weeks until baby no 2 arrives and the sleepless nights start all over again

thank you ever so much for your advice and have a lovely weekend.
x