What do I do?????

[Taler]

DD 19 months is taking AGES to fall asleep at night!

For a number of months we put her to be at 7pm and she would be awake in her cot content and happy babbling away/playing with her teddies for half hour-an hour on average then put herself to sleep.

Basically the "ideal". What every parent would like.

For the past 3 weeks or so though she's just not falling asleep. Nothing has changed in terms of her routine and am confident she's not hungry.

She's not upset at all and when u go in she's happy enough and usually jumps from one end of cot to other in a playful way. She is proper wide awake!!!

So inevitably by about 9pm either DH or I have to take her out of cot and hold her til she falls asleep. Something I really don't wanna do as a) she's always been good at falling asleep on her own and b) don't want this to become her 'norm'.

We generally only go in when it's clear she's thrown her dummy and/or all her teddies out the cot. When we do go in we silently give dummy back, put back teddies, lay her down and walk out.

We are showin her that it's not play time and that my my and daddy aren't going to talk to her when we go in. (But realise that we are still going in which she may well see as a game???).

What do I do???

How many naps does she have in the day?

Also, is her room dark enough? I had something similar with my 23m old and it was because is was so light in his room now the nights are getting longer. Got a black out blind and solved it first night!!

My same-aged baby is exactly the same! It's a very new thing, and nothing in his works has changed except he doesn't think sleep is for him. Once he is asleep, he sleeps nicely, but getting him there is hard work.

Everything I've read suggests that it's probably related to some kind of growth/developmental period. I'm doing lots of calm and quiet and dark stuff, and waiting for things to improve. Much sympathy from here!

She has one nap at lunchtime. When at home the naps are on average 2 hours. When at nursery he has a lunchtime nap for on average 1 hour.

She never used to have a problem with the light so why would it be a problem now?

Plus my nephew (nearly 7 yrs old) can only go to sleep if it's pich black coz that's what he's been used to. Would prefer to not go down this path.

Callamia, nice to know I'm not alone!

DD also sleeps fantastically well once asleep. She gets her 10-12 hours a night which is pretty much what she should be getting at this age.

Naps sound fine, and if there's no change to the light in her room it's not that... Sounds like what Callamia says it's probably a developmental/growth stage and she will get back into a routine shortly.

The evenings are getting lighter, later which may be a factor in to why she's staying up later. Worth looking into making the room darker. If you are against black out blinds, fine , but at least look into making the room a bit darker. It's 9.24 now and it's still bright outside.
Also, why are you putting her toys back into her cot?! If she chucks them out, leave them out. Or don't have them in there in the first place if she's using them as a game.

definitely a developmental leap at around this age. I remember having lots of late bedtimes & early wakeups with ds at that age. we tried limiting his nap to 1hour after someone suggested he may need to drop his nap but all that did was make him overtired. so we just had to ride it out & it did settle down eventually at about 20 months.

What we did find, however, was that he was no longer tired enough to go to sleep at a 7pm bedtime anymore. Because he couldnt cope without the nap, we had to accept that while he continued to nap his bedtime needed to be later. So he napped 1-3 & bed at 8pm & he settled to sleep immediately, whereas when we put him down earlier he'd still be up at 8.30-9. It worked out quite wellas we got to enjoy the summer evenings & once he dropped the nap his bedtime went back to 7pm. hth