Why won't my child sleep anymore?!

[NotBehindTheRadiatorPlease]

Hi all. DD is 21 months old and we are frankly at our wits end with her sleep at the moment!

Up until 3/4 months ago she slept very well. The odd unsettled night due to teething or illness of course but most nights she slept 12 hours straight. Then, when she was around 17/18 months old she began waking up. We thought it was the 18 month sleep regression so told ourselves it would pass in a few weeks like the other regressions have, but nope... It's now been 4 months and she's STILL sleeping terribly.

A typical night is... She will go to bed at 8ish, sleep for anywhere between 3-5 hours and then wake up hysterically crying. She will refuse milk or water so isn't hungry/thirsty, and pain relief doesn't appear to make any difference. Most nights she will calm down within a few minutes but will then be wide awake for HOURS. Some nights she will be awake from midnight until 4/5am before eventually falling back to sleep. Any attempt to put her back to bed is met with crying and screaming. There have been nights where she's cried hysterically for over an hour upon waking though, even when we're holding her/trying to comfort her. I'm a full time uni student and my partner works full time, and most nights we are only getting 4 hours of sleep. We are so tired!

We have tried both stopping her from napping and allowing her to nap. Neither makes any difference to her nighttime sleep.

The thing is, she will still have the odd night of sleeping through, although this is fairly uncommon now!

I don't know if this is partly our fault though, as she has been rocked/cuddled to sleep pretty much since birth. We were happy to do this as, up until a few months ago, she slept very well. But now she obviously doesn't! So is it a matter of teaching her to fall asleep on her own? Last night when she woke up at 12 and was still awake at 2 we resorted, out of sheer desperation, to putting her in her cot and leaving her to cry. It was horrible and I felt so bad, but she did fall back to sleep within a couple of minutes and then slept until 8am!

She is perfectly happy and content in the day, just seems to hate sleeping at the moment! Any advice/experience would be so helpful. We're desperate!

Thank you 😊

[Usmednet]

Hello i have got a sensory bed blaket
I Hope if It Can help To m'y child go bed And have fun

[justsotiredallthetime]

Sorry, no magical answers but my 22 month old is the same. Although he's never slept well and we get the occasional sleeping through. The best he's done is 4 nights in a row and that was once. Tried crying it out but he gets so worked up and hysterical! We're exhausted, niggle at each other and thoroughly fed up!