Holiday has ruined bed time

[zoegent]

Hi all,

I’m hoping for some help and some light at the end of the tunnel!
We have just come back from a 2 week holiday in Florida with our 2 year old DD.
Before this holiday, she slept through and went to bed with a story and a good night kiss, let you leave them room and went asleep till the morning.
On holiday, we had her in our room, being a new environment, I didn’t like to leave her and knew she wouldn’t want to be left. So each night we put her to bed and stayed with her till she went asleep or cuddled her to sleep. Being just for the holiday, i just saw it as special circumstances and thought once she was in her own room she would go straight back to normal.
Boy am I wrong.
We have been back a week now, and the minute you leave the room screams and shouts. We have tried to leave her, she goes quiet then half hour later she’s screaming again, we are then in and out of her room for at least 2 hours. Ending up with one of sitting in there till she falls asleep. Again once she’s asleep, we don’t hear from her till morning.
I get that her routine has been out of whack, but are we literally just meant to let her scream it out for hours or do we just sit with her and then what? Tonight it took almost 2 hours of sitting in her room for her to stall asleep! She doesn’t want a cuddle , she’s happy to lay there. She just needs to know we are in the room.
Help, any advice? It’s so frustrating when she slept so well and what was an amazing holiday and ruined it!!!!

It always takes a while to get back into your routine after a holiday. You could try the gradual retreat method??

I think that is what we are going to try tonight!
Took 2 hours last night, the fireworks didn’t help, but we can’t do that every night!

Adjusting back after jet lag can be really tough. I would just go easy for the next week or so and then see what happens. She'll more than likely adapt back just fine. I know the first week or so was hell for us. Ours was going to sleep just fine but waking at 2:30am for the day and up wide awake for the rest of the night. It got a little better every day.

Does she still nap? It's also possible she's now ready to drop her nap if she hasn't already. Mine did at 2 years 4 months and it was exactly like this, taking 2-3 hours a night to get her to settle and go to sleep and we couldn't leave the room. It could be entirely coincidental that it happened after the holiday.

Thanks for your reply!

Some days she naps and some days she doesn’t. Again before the holiday it was never an issue how long she napped for etc, but it seems to be now.

When you dropped the nap did you still have to be in the room for them to go to sleep?

We have just tried to put her a bed and walk out and leave her, but that was just a disaster and we have now ended up back in her room.

Could you try sitting with her, then saying you're just popping to the bathroom for something/sort something out/put laundry away or whatever but if she can lie quietly you'll come back to give her a big cuddle, then repeat as needed? Obviously as she starts to trust that you'll always come back you can start to make the gaps between going back in longer and longer and hopefully you'll find that she eventually falls asleep without you. This worked really well with our DC when they've been through awkward bedtime phases. Good luck!

Thank you, that is god advice. I think that’s where we will end up, having to say night night, give her some time and then pop back in and calm her down etc, hoping eventually like you say that she will have slept between the gaps!
Like all stages, there is light at the end of the table, but at the moment I just can’t see it :-( xx