Hi all, first time dad and first time poster here.
Me and my wife are both first-time parents to DD, she has been so good on the whole with her sleeping. However just over the last month after a bout with a cold and sickness bug, she is absolutely refusing to be put down to sleep either at lunchtime for her nap or in the evening. She has been having one nap around lunchtime for a good few months now, and slept pretty solidly through the night from around 6.30/7.00pm to 8am.
If we try to put her down in her cot she just pulls herself up and starts screaming, and I am talking about that real ear-shattering, brain-melting squeal that toddlers can do. She throws her dummy, and this just persists as we try and just read her a story to calm her down. My wife has had some luck with getting DD to sleep by reading stories but it seems like now even that won't work. DD seems to be teething badly, and we are medicating by cycling calpol and nurofen along with teething powder to soothe her gums. When DD finally is sleeping at night she will wake up at least 3 times in the night screaming, last night it took an hour to settle her down and both me and my wife have work today so we are basically zombies. Then just now we've both tried putting her down for an afternoon nap and just nothing at all will work. Maybe she is overtired but how do you fix that if she refuses to sleep because shes tired? We just want to hear that others have experienced this, we feel isolated and that we have no solution but to all be without sleep. Any advice/experiences would be appreciated at this point.