27 month old not sleeping well...please help me!!

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Hi, I am new to mumsnet, I do go on another forum where everyone is lovely but i am not really getting any practical help!! I have been reading the mumsnet toddler book which is great so hoping I can get some useful tips!!

My DD (27 months) is giving me hell in the night at the moment. She is getting out of bed up to 7 or 8 times from between 2 and 4am. She will get out of bed open her door and then come into our room. This has been going on to different degrees (i.e. sometimes only once, sometimes loads of times in a night, occasionally never!!) since about January and it is wearing thin now!! I have tried everything i can think of but i am not sure how consistent I am in the early hours!! When she first started doing this regularly she couldn't open her bedroom door and would usually go back to bed if we ignored her. The last 2-3 nights have been REALLY bad, and now I am up at stupid o'clock cos I can't get back to sleep and will have to feed the baby (4 months) in a hour anyway!!

I have tried talking to my dd to see why she is out of bed but she won't talk to me when she gets up, she always just gets back into bed again and then waits until you are just dropping back off to sleep then out she gets again!!

I think the last couple of nights she may be hot as the boiler is in her room and the window is open but behind a blackout.....anyway i can come up with all sorts of reasons why she gets out but different everytime so think I am clutching at straws!! I have been in tears the last 2 nights, with the potty training issues we have had (will post in the appropriate board) I feel like I am doin everything wrong I am such a crap mum!!

Sorry to go on but i am at my wits end, she always slept so well as a baby and I promise I was never smug about it!!! She doesn't nap in the day anymore though often she seems to need it, I will have to send her to nursery in a right state today and I feel so bad for her even though it is self inflicted!!

Just looking for your suggestions really!

OP You are not a crap mum! Toddlers are strange sometimes!I have a 28 month old dd and a 2 month old
ds, my dd has just started being a bit funny about bed as well! She hates going to bed now and makes me lie next to her for a bit and talk to her, and she hates it being all dark. Has to have a night light on. And then 2 or 3 times in the night she wakes and either, cries, yells MUM or just screams once. Then i run in to check her and she is either asleep or just says "go away"....

For no apparent reason!!

It may just be a stage they go thru, i dont know. Its certainly not you tho.
My dd is having a 2 hour day sleep still, but she always has, and just in the last month or two started waking. She has a blanky and pillow and 2 special dolls that she HAS to have with her, sometimes its cos shes dropped one, but mainly its for no reason.

She may be feeling a little insecure with the new baby, and perhaps starting to have little dreams/nightmares. Personally i would probably let her in my bed to sleep hoping she will grow out of it when she feels a bit safer at nights, but i know that may be tiring for you with a baby.

My dd has just bought a 'touch lamp' for dgs.If he wakes up he can touch it and get a low light to find his toy or his cup or dummy.He used to go in to them several times and as they have an 8 wk old ds2 it was exhausting but now he just goes back to sleep on his own and light goes off after a set time.It is made by 'baby tec'I think.

My DS1 was exactly the same once we moved him out of his cot and into a bed. Before then he had always been a fantastic sleeper who rarely disturbed us in the night. I posted on here a few times about it and it seems a very common thing for 2 year olds - and another very common theme was the arrival of a new sibling.

DS1 definitely got worse though when DS2 arrived 5 months ago (DS1 was 2.4 at the time) and was up and down like a jack-in-a-box - very frustrating as DS2 has always slept extremely well. I am convinced that one of the reasons was DS2 was in our bedroom and he felt left out (understandable really).

I don't really have any advice tbh as DS1 is still getting up at least once a night (VERY occasionally he won't but this is few and far between) but just wanted to say you are not alone. He actually stayed in bed completely on Sunday and Monday night so I thought 'great' - last night, he was up 3 times!!

I tried the 'rapid return' technique (DS1 thought this was a hilarious game and would just giggle at me), I had a couple of nights where I came downstairs and read/watched TV leaving him behind the stairgate at the top of the stairs (it was me he wanted so DH and DS2 carried on sleeping upstairs ) and he soon put himself back to bed (we had used this technique to get him to stay in bed at bedtime and it worked quite well). The most success we have had was with a star chart where he gets 2 stars if he does manage to stay in bed all night but only gets 1 star if he gets up once or twice (as long as he goes straight back to sleep once I have put his story CD back on) and no stars if he p*sses about - working towards a toy/present each week or so.

Although he does get up once or twice, he does, at least, go straight back to bed now which is a step in the right direction.