im really at a loss. I’ve tried everything. My nearly 2 year old has entered a new phase where every single bedtime takes 2-3 hours, and she doesn’t end up sleeping until 10pm most nights. Because of this I don’t get a minute to myself in the evening, once she’s gone to bed I feel to anxious to sleep because I know she will wake and be hysterically upset during the night. When I try to get her to sleep the way I always have (bottle of milk and cuddles) she immediately leaps up and wants to play, it then becomes a fight, me trying to calmly get her to lay down again or to rock her or cuddle her or sing to her, and her working herself up to the point of screaming like she’s possessed and I don’t recognise her. Sometimes the states she gets herself in makes me wonder if there’s some neurodivergence going on. I don’t know how to handle it. I’m a first time single mum, and in these hours I feel so alone as I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. I try to stay calm and regulate her by being regulated myself, i wait for her to calm and try to let her express what she needs, but if I make 1 wrong move like roll over or get up she immediately goes into crash out mode again. I tried to sleep train her briefly when she was about 10 months but decided it wasn’t for us, I don't have anything against other mums doing so but for me, my daughter would not stop crying, she just kept going and going and it broke my heart. She sleeps in my bed every night because of her stubbornness of no cot. To combat this I took one side of her cot off to make it more of a toddler bed, and during the day she loves her “big girl bed” but as soon as bedtime comes she is totally against that too. To clarify our bedtime routine is always, bath, pjs, books, milk, bed.
if you’ve got this far, thank you, please can you leave any recommendations you have below as I am completely stuck in this cycle of dreading bedtime.