it’s quite long but I think it’s all relevant..
My son had always co-slept and breastfed to sleep since he was a baby, the breastfeeding had whittled down to three times a day - going to sleep for a daytime nap, night sleep and once in the morning when he woke up, which worked out fine for everyone. When he was 20 months old I had another baby. The plan had been to breastfeed both as his was pretty low impact and it was how he went to sleep but in the weeks leading up to the new baby’s birth I assume my colostrum came in and he just went absolutely nuts for breastfeeding, wanted to breastfeed literally all day and night. Through the night he was waking me up 8-12 times and wanted to stay attached permanently. If he woke up and wasn’t attached he would wake me up to go back on. I couldn’t sleep while he was attached so I was getting barely any sleep. I realised at this point I wasn’t going to be able to manage that and breastfeeding a newborn so he would have to come off.
I saw something on tiktok that an easy way to wean a toddler was to use aloe Vera gel on the nipple as it was safe to ingest but tasted horrid so a couple of weeks before the baby was due we got some and it worked. There was no big traumatic refusing to let him feed, no screaming or crying he was just confused that it didn’t taste nice and didn’t want it anymore. In my mind at the time it went perfectly apart from it seemed like he didn’t know how to go to sleep without it. The first couple of times he took a long time to go to sleep, a lot of rolling around and fidgeting etc but eventually went off. Then he started crying at bedtime, calling out mummy and daddy over and over even though we were both laid either side of him. This went on and on, then the crying started to last longer, then it turned to screaming..
Cut to now, he just turned 2 and we are completely at a loss of what to do with him. Almost every single episode of sleep involves a hysterical tantrum, to the point his throat is horse and he shakes uncontrollably. He refuses to nap at lunchtime unless I take him out in the car (which I can’t do because the baby absolutely hates the car and screams the whole time anyway) but is too young to comfortably make it through the whole day so he either crashes out at 4pm and will scream for an hour when woken up and then won’t go to sleep till midnight or we have a horrible evening with him because he’s overtired.
I’ve tried introducing other sleeping habits, white noise, bum tapping, back massaging, book reading, looking at pictures and only very occasionally will he go off without an almighty fight.
Im wondering a couple things, I know this isn’t normal toddler behaviour (I have an older child that never did anything like this) but is it normal behaviour given the specific circumstance around his change in sleeping habit that was out of his control?
Is there something I’m missing or something I can try to help him sleep without getting so worked up?
Im not sure if this could be a sign of future behavioural issues maybe, he throws tantrums over pretty much anything but mainly around having to go in the pushchair or car seat and being woken up from naps and of course going to sleep, has anyone’s child done similar and been so volatile but just snapped out of it and carried on as normal at school age?
Just to add that apart from throwing tantrums constantly, he has no development issues and he is a really sweet boy, loves to be helpful, loves his siblings, speaks really well, is learning to count, is toilet trained and dry at night, generally really lovely and bright.