How did you sort terrible toddler sleep?

[sarahb083]

I have a 2.5 year old who has never slept well. She'll sometimes sleep through for a few months, but generally has woken up once or twice a night since birth.

We currently go in and resettle her and leave. Sometimes we sit with her for a few minutes but we don't stay until she falls asleep. We keep it quiet and calm and boring. We don't go in until she's been crying for a few minutes.

Any tips?! I'm so fed up of broken sleep.

Bump

My youngest would wake at least every hour and take ages to go back to sleep from birth. I couldnt find anything that would work, but then randomly at 3 years old it clicked and sleeps through every night and has for years. Eldest child slept brilliantly and I used the same routine for both so it was entirely child based and nothing I did or didn’t do. Goodluck, it’s literal torture isn’t it?

We moved house when he was 3.5, slept through every night From day one in the new house, don't know if that's an option,😂.

We bedshared. Honestly, sleep and wellbeing was the most important thing for me. I had no hang ups about 'sleep routines' or getting them to sleep in their own beds. While at toddler age, they went to sleep in their own rooms, at first wake up, they came in to us. We had a bedroom set up that accommodated this. I didn't even attempt to re-settle in their own rooms, as I have sleep issues and if I fully wake up, it takes me at least an hour to fall back to sleep. Whereas just bringing them in (in fact, sometimes, often dh would do this, so I didn't even need to get up and once out of a cot, they just walked in themselves), didn't wake me up fully. Then even if they woke again, stirred, etc. it didn't affect my sleep enough to cause me any issues.

When they didn't need us anymore, they just didn't wake and slept through all night in their room with no faff from us (generally from around 3). My youngest is now 5 and in Y1. On very rare occasions (maybe 1-2x a month), he may still wake in the middle of the night and not settle and will come in to us (we have a small bed in our room for this). I barely hear him and dh doesn't even wake up. But it means I've had years now of good quality sleep and there have been no battles around middle of the night wakings and that's worked really well for us.

@mindutopia I'd be happy to co-sleep, but my friends who do it say they sleep awfully because their toddler moves so much in the night, so I'm worried I'd end up sleeping worse!

Bump for any other tips!