To expect DD to sleep through the night or at least allow my DH to resettle her?

[lucieth]

DD is nearly 2. In a SAHM, my husband works full time. He's a very loving dad and does his very best to share in parenting and house chores whilst working, but naturally being a SAHM I spend a lot more time with DD than him. They do have a great relationship though - when he gets in from work she runs to the door shouting PAPPIIII (daddy in his language) with hugs and she belly laughs with him like she doesn't with anyone else.

DD absolutely refuses to be put to bed or resettled at night by my DH. It has to be me, otherwise she will cry MUMMMYYYYYY and refuse to go to bed. I can count on my hand the number of times I've been out for bedtime but each time she will cry and bedtime will take 3-4 hours. Once she still won't go to sleep till I come home at 11pm (bedtime normally 7:30pm) and other times he could only put her to bed by doing it in our bed (as opposed to her cot where she normally sleeps) and stay will her in the dark from 7:30 in the bed.

It makes me exhausted as it clearly means he can't help if she wakes at night (feels like every child sleeps through around 1 year old but here we are at 22 months still having 3-4 wakes per night) and if she wakes whilst I'm showering by the time I'm out she's been crying for a while and woken herself up more.

Hes not always home before bedtime from work so can't commit to always doing it more often. Plus it's truly torture for everyone if he can't put her to sleep for 3-4 hours and it feels right for me to step in.

Absolutely. Of all my friends and family, children were sleeping through by 6-9 months except for the odd wake up when they were ill, etc. If they were still regularly waking up after this, I'd be implementing sleep training as it's so important for children to have a good sleep pattern.

My 5 year old has never slept through the night and has strong associations with which adults do which things (I go to him in the middle of the night, that means it's still night time and he stays in his room, his dad goes to him in the morning, that means it's time to get up for the day, etc.) but he's quite severely autistic so I don't expect to get a full night's sleep any time soon 😅

Is it possible for a 2 year old to learn to go to sleep with either parent? Yes.

Do they automatically learn it? No. It takes time and practise. And probably a tough learning curve for all initially.

If it’s important to your household, you’ll need to collectively put the effort in to help her learn. Same with waking at night and settling back down.

At the moment mummy is what she’s most familiar with for sleep, and that’s what she wants, and that’s what she’s getting.

Two year olds are unreasonable, innit.

My DS had hysterics if DH tried to do bedtime. Most toddlers just want their mum.

If your husband has tried to settle her but you have eventually stepped in and taken over then unfortunately she has learned that if she cries and fusses for long enough she will get Mummy.

The only way to get her used to settling with Daddy is to be absolutely firm and consistent i.e. if Daddy does bedtime then you do not take over under any circumstances, even if it takes hours to get her to bed. It’ll be tough the first few times but once she learns that Daddy is the only option she’ll stop fighting him and he’ll be able to get her to bed much more easily. Same with him going into her at night.

Mine was like this at the same age but once he got used to Daddy doing occasional bedtimes he was fine. It was the same when I stopped breastfeeding him at night and just offered cuddles: raging and tantrums for the first few nights but I toughed it out and he soon adjusted.

I have to agree with the others who had said get rid of the milk bottles for bed and night time waking. With all of mine they stopped getting up in the night when they realised the drink would be water. It was still a bottle but just a bottle of water and that’s not as nice as milk so within 2/3 days the night time waking was gone.

Falling asleep with a milk bottle is no good either as it’s not good for the teeth, swap it for water if needed but give anymore before teeth preferably downstairs so bedtime has no milk. You may have a few days of having to sit in her room while she effectively moans about no milky bot bot bottles but she will get over it.

It's with trying, but equally the opposite may happen.

When we cut out bottles for my 1ish year old (through watering down) all that happened was wake ups went from 15m (glug bottle, go back to sleep) to 2-3 hours. Eventually things improved, but she didn't start sleeping through.

It may make things better, but equally it could make things worse. Who knows with toddlers!!

We transitioned to 50:50 bedtimes around 18 months. Daddy did the bedtime routine with us for a while so she was used to him, then he took over specific tasks, then the whole thing while I was out. We talked about her putting her favourite teddy to bed to distract her and after that talked about mummy's turn and daddy's turn to do bedtime. By 2 we has got to where he could do bedtime with no tears. There were some tears initially, sometimes I felt able to go and help, others I needed the break or was out. It made such a difference to my mental health not to be the only person who could do bedtime.

We transitioned to 50:50 bedtimes around 18 months. Daddy did the bedtime routine with us for a while so she was used to him, then he took over specific tasks, then the whole thing while I was out. We talked about her putting her favourite teddy to bed to distract her and after that talked about mummy's turn and daddy's turn to do bedtime. By 2 we has got to where he could do bedtime with no tears. There were some tears initially, sometimes I felt able to go and help, others I needed the break or was out. It made such a difference to my mental health not to be the only person who could do bedtime.

Im assuming they weren’t breastfeeding?

Completely normal on both counts. There is nothing wrong with her. However, speaking as someone who has had this with both children until much older than 7, that doesn't make it any less difficult and overwhelming for you

Having a bottle at bed time and during the night if she wants it, and waking 3-4 times at 22 months is not normal, or desirable. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with her at all, but it isn't a good routine. I agree with pp, get rid of the bottle altogether and hopefully she will stop waking so much when she isn't getting any milk. As for your dh putting her to bed she will only get used to it when he does it more often, there is no way around that really.

@Newsenmum Yes, we were breastfeeding but most of us had dropped a number of feeds by this age as we were all back at work. I enjoyed breastfeeding but it's true that a bottle will definitely lead to a longer bout of sleep at night.

I assumed the same, I don’t know any breastfed babies who didn’t need multiple feeds in the night at 6-9 months.

Doesn’t work for all! I was breastfeeding heaps in the night.

@PinkPlantCase it's possible to gently sleep train after 6 months... I did with my BF baby and he slept right through

My daughter slept in our bed until she was 3 and only just started sleeping through at 3 and a half. My son is 6 months and will put himself to sleep and sleep until 6am…we’ve done nothing different with either of them.

Every child is different so go easy on yourself, the parents with good sleepers shout it from the rooftops so the ‘bad’ sleepers seem less common.

Cry it out breaks my heart, they will sleep when they are developmentally ready to do so. Hang in there

My current BF 3 month old sleeps 10pm-5.30am

It's is perfectly normal for babies, toddlers, young children to wake during the night. I know this because the more I talk about my two not sleeping, the more people tell me how relieved they are they're not alone and have someone to talk to. DD5 wakes once a night usually and comes in with us at that point. DS2 wakes 5 times a night and gets resettled into his cot, more often than not by me.

DH and I consciously chose not to sleep train. Absolutely the right decision for our family although exhausted really doesn't describe it. It's really hard, I'm ok admitting that our choice and decision is a killer right now. I feel your pain xx

My DD was the same. Lovely relationship with DH who's a great dad. But it had to be me at bedtime until about 2.5 years. She'd wake in the night and sneak into our bed to cuddle me. We just bought a bigger bed. It won't last forever. She stopped the nighttime waking around age 4.
There's nothing wrong with having a strong mother/daughter bond.

You need to break the milk to sleep habit. A nearly 2 year old should be able to self settle to sleep and a child who can self settle is more likely to sleep through the night which would help the multiple wake up situation.

Keep it boring - water and it’s nighttime back to bed. Don’t get her up or stimulate her. It may just be habit. You may have to keep going through it before it clicks. If poorly it goes out the window

I agree with you that some sort of sleep training would be beneficial in this situation. If I hadn’t done this before going back to work there is no way I would have managed to be back at work! It is a rough few nights but the benefits in the long run cancel that out and it in no way damaged my relationship with my girl.

It really isn't true! Depends entirely on the child. My ebf baby slept reliably through the night at 8 months. Self-settled from birth.

My FF baby never slept more than about 2 hours at a time. Didn't wake up crying, didn't want feeding,changing or a drink, but definitely wasn't going back to sleep again for an hour or so. No matter what we tried. The day always started at about 5am, regardless of bedtime. Didn't reliably sleep through until he was about 4.

I breastfed mine to 8 months. Both more or less stopped waking/feeding during the night once they went on solids at 6 months. And from birth the most the would have woken during the night was twice and that only in the first few weeks. I had a really good day time routine so they went to bed full and happy. And awake.

Anything is 'normal' if it's your normal but in so far as I can recall, very few of my friends or family e would have 3-4 times a night waking even for an infant, let alone for a 2 year old. So not a scientific study by any means but I think it would be very difficult to endure normal family and working life if the norm genuinely was what the OP describes.