17 months and its all gone wrong...

[fizzybubblesforme]

My 17 month was previously a great sleeper, would fall asleep whilst having her milk or more recently settled herself with no assistance.

Now...she cries and cries and cries and wants someone in all the time (I appreciate some babies have been like this for ages and we are lucky to have got to 17 month but now its hellish).

Currently we settle her and leave, she immediately starts crying when she is left, we leave it 4 minutes then one of us goes in and settles her, then the minute she is left she will start crying again, we repeat at 8 minutes and then 12minutes...and basically she cries herself to sleep.

Basically are we doing the right thing? What else can we try?
My DH is not convinced of this strategy but without one of us staying with her and eating into our evening I don't know what else to try.....

[Nevercan]

What is your routine like? Is getting too much or too little sleep perhaps suiting the day?

[fizzybubblesforme]

She gets up between 7:30 and 8:00 - sometimes we have to wake her. She will usually have a nap after lunch and it ranges from 1hour to 2hours. Her length of nap doesn't seem to make any difference to her settling at night tbh.

Her bedtime routine involves my DH giving her her bath and milk and then putting her to bed. He only gets home from work to give her her bath and so this gets her excited. I thought this wasn't helping as she gets sp excited when he gets home. But after this weekend when he has been here both days it has made no difference to her settling herself.

Any ideas?

[minibmw2010]

I think there is a 17 nth sleep regression so it's possible that this is what is happening as opposed to anything you are doing? Our 17 mth old has just started walking properly and as with all 'stages' it's screwed up his sleep, he wakes up at 2 or 3 am every day but I keep telling myself it's just a phase (as all the others were) and try not to change anything I do so that in time he'll go back to 'normal routine', sigh ....

[LoobyLou33]

fizzybubbles we are having a very similar problem. DS is 18 months and was a pretty bad sleeper til he was 8 months old, but then he started sleeping through and eventually learned to go to sleep by himself. I think he was about 11 months old when we could pop him in the cot, turn off the light and leave him to drop off alone. (before that we used to sit by him til he fell asleep).

But in the past month he's started crying when we leave the room, and we've ended up mostly sitting by the cot to get him off to sleep. We've tried some vague controlled crying but it's not been consistent enough tbh.

Like minibmw says I wondered if it's a development/sleep regression phase. But in that case - what do I do about it? If we keep sitting with him every night, won't he just get used to that? Or will he grow out of it again? I don't want him to get into the habit of needing us there just to go to sleep, it seems a bit ridiculous at 18 months!