Help - frequent night wakings in 2 year old

[jenniferlawrence]

I'm at the end of my rope. My daughter has been in a bad sleep phase since 18 months and she is now 26 months. It seems to be getting worse not better. I think she's gotten into a bad habit of wanting me to comfort her when she wakes in the night and she cries and cries until I give in.

The worst thing is that its so random. I go to bed never knowing what the night has in store and I'm so stressed about it that its affecting my sleep even when she is sleeping.

Some nights she sleeps all night. Some nights she wakes once or twice, moans and then settles herself but more often these days she wakes at 11, 2 and 5 and takes me an hour each time to settle her. I get up for work at 6am and I'm so run down and knackered.

Has anyone got any suggestions? I think I need a consistent approach and I need to be firm. She's old enough now to know that nighttime is for sleeping.

She only has 20 minutes sleep in the day. We cut it down because she wasn't tired at bedtime. She now goes to bed tired and sleeps straight away at 7.30.

I'm awake now because she's been crying on and off since 11.45. She's only happy when I'm cuddling her or sitting on her floor rubbing her tummy.

I wouldn't necessarily shorten her sleep during the day - she may be waking at night because she's got too much to process and it's disturbing her sleep. At least let her have one full sleep cycle (45 minutes) to process what she's done in the morning.

I'd not heard that before. What about when they drop daytime sleep altogether? Do you think it should go from 45 mins to nothing?

She used to have 30-40 minutes but she wasn't tired at bedtime.

Well, they generally drop daytime sleeps over a period of time, so some days they'll have one and some days they won't. But by the time they drop daytime naps altogether then their brains are more able to cope with the amount of input. 26 months would be very young indeed to not have a proper afternoon sleep. You do hear about toddlers who are determined not to sleep in the afternoon but they're the exception rather than the rule, and if she's still going to sleep after lunch then I would let her have it. She probably is tired at bedtime but it's taking her a while to wind down. She may well not go to sleep within about an hour of having a bath or tv, for instance, because both are stimulating. It's ok for her to be in bed for half an hour or an hour without going to sleep - just cooling off from the day.

Ok. I think I will try going back to a longe nap then. Maybe she is waking because she's over tired.

Thanks

Hey jennifer - how have the last few nights been? Any change?

my son is 21 months & cut his naps out himself- dropped a nap at 10 months then his other nap at 19 months.
I never naps unless he is sick.

I got the exception