My son has just turned 2 in mid Feb. He's always been a good sleeper after we did some sleep training at 5 months old. We've always had the same bedtime routine (bath, books, bed at 7pm) no TV in the hours leading up to bedtime and he dropped his bottle by 1.5 years. We would say night night and leave the room and he would lay down and fall asleep / chat himself to sleep. At xmas we got rid of his dummy as he only ever had it at night or nap nd he slept fine, asked for it on the first night but then not again and didn't seem fussed. He was sleeping through to 7am as usual.
Mid Jan he started crying when we left him in the room before bed which took us by surprise. Soon after he started waking up and not connecting his sleep cycles too. He stands up and demands to get up. We are firm with him that it's bedtime with any night wakings up to 6am and use the yoto player as a gro clock, so it turns to yellow at 6am. He has one nap a day from 12.30 and it's usually 90 minutes at nursery. Recently he will only do 45 minutes with us, wakes up upset and crying after one sleep cycle.
Bedtimes are now taking 1 hour from put down to going to sleep and are heartbreaking for us all. We've been pretty consistent in going in at 1 minute / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 minutes then resetting. But after 8 weeks of this we are seeing no improvement. We say firmly that its bedtime and time to go to sleep. He throws out his pillow and teddy, that he's always slept with and we put them back in. He throws them back out.
We are due our second baby in June and I'm wondering if this is the root cause (not that we can change that!). We're at our wits end really as everything I've read about 2 year sleep regression says a few weeks to six weeks max but its been longer and we've had no improvement. We're considering giving the dummy back but I'm unsure this would make a difference.
Any help or advice much appreciated!