16 month old bedtime battles

[NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown]

I have a 16 month old DS and bedtime has become a complete and utter nightmare!

We moved him into a cot sidecarred to the bed from our bed about 3 weeks ago. I subsequently night-weaned him because I'm pregnant and suffering extreme nursing aversion but did not (and still do not) want to wean him completely but I knew something needed to change and thought now was a good time to do it because I don't want to be up feeding 2 babies in the night if he continues after the new baby arrives.

So he's gone from nursing every couple of hours during the night to regularly going 7 or 8 hours asleep without a feed which obviously is great but getting him to sleep in the first place seems to be getting more and more difficult as time goes on. 40 mins on a good night, 2 hours plus on a bad one. I have fallen asleep on more than one occasion and been there for the night unintentionally waiting for him to wind down.

I'm not sure if he still needs 2 naps or is ready to cut down to one. He went for a few weeks napping at regular times (he does this every now and then) but now they're all over the place. This is more normal for him, he's never napped well. It makes no difference what his naps are like during the day, bedtime is always a battle.

So basically he will just climb/crawl all over his cot and our bed, stand up and run around the cot, ask for a drink, headbutt us, do anything rather than lie down and go to sleep. For the first time since he's been born I feel we've made a rod for our own back by co-sleeping and now having the side off the cot - because it's not safe to leave him in the bedroom alone. We have a playpen set up in their which we put him in when things get too much, but we never leave him for more than a minute because I want him to have positive sleep associations and I am completely against CIO or even CC. We literally leave him for a minute so we can calm down. It's very stressful and I don't want to end up shouting at him (or worse) so sometimes I feel like I need to take a few deep breaths outside the room.

Usually what happens is eventually he will calm down enough to nurse, I'll take him off periodically and ask him if he's ready to go to sleep. Sometimes he'll scream and I'll let him back on and try again a bit later. Sometimes he rolls off by himself. If I let him fall asleep at the breast I've found he needs to feed again every sleep cycle so I try and avoid it.

If he doesn't eventually wind down like this, increasingly we're finding he cries through what I assume is tiredness. He gets into a huge state and is often inconsolable which is absolutely heartbreaking.

I am at my wits end. He's going to sleep later and later each night and waking earlier. I just want my baby to go to sleep at night without hearing his breath upset from crying and without DH and I feeling resentful, irritated and then ultimately guilty every night.

We've gone from dinner as a family about 6.30 and bedtime at 7.30 (asleep on average about 9) to dinner at 5, bedtime at 6.30 (asleep around 8.30)

Can anyone relate/help? I suspect separation anxiety plays a part. I can't leave the room at bedtime without him screaming the place down and he won't be comforted by anyone else. Will this pass?

Sorry I don't know what to do. But this is a great comfort to me as ds is like this and when people offer me sleep advice I get looks when I describe ds's somersaults etc.

It doesn't matter how tired he is, he can't just lie down and try to sleep, he keeps arsing around until he starts crying from tiredness. It doesn't matter if I sit quietly and ignore him, blah blah.

It is very stressful. Its ridiculous but I rock back and forth with him in the sling as keeping him restrained seems to help. I wouldn't recommend it btw just wanted to let you know its not just you!

Hello, our DS is 15 months and has recently been through a particularly difficult sleep period (bloody awful TBH!) but we have been using white noise to help calm him down. He still has a cuddle to get to sleep (with the white noise) and I also sing to him to help him calm down. Don't panic, he really will grow out of it

Our little cherub projectile-vomits if left to cry... Horrible, I have never seen so much sick in my life!

Ahhhh my home! Yes to the projectile vom and evening acrobatics. I have no advice but lots of sympathy.

Nice to know we're not alone (well not nice but you know what I mean)

suzysheep I suspect that's what would happen with us. I'm not willing to try it. It's hard enough having your baby cry hysterically in your arms let alone leaving them to their own devices during an 'episode' - I even started googling night terrors tonight because when he gets going there's absolutely no way to get through to him.

Hoping someone has some words of advice

well i would say at this age one nap a day is probably fine, as long as its a good length i e 2hrs :)

you are in a pattern of overtiredness making it harder for him to get to sleep so if i was you i would do whatever worked for a few days to get him on an even keel tbh.

then when you want to stop feeding him etc, with mine at this age i fed them, then unlatched them, lay next to them, with my arm across them so they couldnt get up! and would shushh and pat them as necessary. feed until sleepy and then pat or whatever they find comforting.

and yes this will pass! but he is little and unless you do cio or cc (which wont work if he cries till he vomits and i dont agree with it either!) then it may not be a quick fix.

on another thread the one about cc that is 20odd pages long, there is something called the kiss and withdraw method that sounds good, offering comfort and reassurance but not leaving them to cry, but again not a quick fix.

and even when he is crying hysterically in your arms, however horrible that is he is gettin some comfort and knows he isnt alone xx

Just to clarify we don't leave him to cry but he voms if we don't get there within about 3 minutes because he wakes up screaming and if it's just 1 of us on the loo/elbow deep in washing up he doesn't have a choice.

Sometimes I find going to sleep actually works...

frakiosaurus my ds1 was like that, in the end we kept a bowl by his bed, and we could run in and catch the puke in a bowl if we timed it right! like you say you try and get there to stop it but if not the bowl was a good stopgap rather than puke on the bed, ds1 was a nightmare for coughing and then being sick as well some babies have a weak muscle at the top of their tummies so its easier for them to be sick (or so the dr told us) they grow out of it eventually!

Moving DD from two sleeps to one sleep made a huge difference to her night time sleep. Also, making sure she is physically tired - swimming, out door activity, even just fresh air from a walk in the pushchair helps.

She still doesn't fall asleep by herself at night time, but we have a good little routine (bath, milk, books, light out, cuddle and bed). I stay with her, but she only gets pats on her back, which she likes, if she lies down. She sleeps through probably 4 nights out of 7. Teething causes her a lot of pain, and is the main cause of her not being able to relax enough to sleep, she seems to take 3 weeks to cut teeth and so far only has 8 (teeth 9 - 12 are currently on the way).

Funnily enough, she gets herself to sleep for her day time nap. Have no idea what the difference is.

BTW - I was advised to do CIO - absolutely no way did I want DD associating bed time with crying. I did a version of CC with very short periods of crying and longer periods of comforting. What it did achieve is getting her to realise that she needed to lie down to sleep, and if she did that Mummy would come in. Not sure if that is really the point, but it is a 100 times better than what was happening previously.