Help 2 year old waking in the night and only settling in our bed!!

[Aappleaday]

The title says it all really 😫 and the 3:40 post….

My DC is coming up for 2 (22 months to be exact) and she’s normally a good sleeper, she has had her moments with teeth etc. For the past week she has been waking up around 3am every day and will only settle in our bed, as soon as her head hits our bed she’s out like a light….. as soon as I transfer her into her cot she’s up screaming. She isn’t cold, I don’t believe she’s hungry… does anyone have any suggestions on what to do?!

We will have a newborn in January and I really don’t want her in our bed with the newborn in the next 2 me crib.

any suggestions are welcome xxxx

Oh and her nap is 1-2 hours normally around lunch time, would cutting this down help?

As she's falling asleep immediately it's doubtful cutting her nap would help, as it doesn't sound like she's not tired. It's a very common age for sleep changes, they're going through so much change developmentally.

We had the exact same thing, and have just been sticking to our usual routine and apart from letting him come in to us we didn't change anything else. It got better over a few weeks and now we're back to normal.

@addler oh this sounds hopeful! I does feel like some sort of regression, but I don’t want her getting used to getting in our bed every night Especially with the new baby on the way.

fingers crossed it passes soon!

We had exactly the same thing with our 2yo and we are also due a baby in January!

We recently moved our DD from the nursery into he own room in a bed. We used this as an opportunity to begin a new routine with how we treat night wakings. The first thing was that I was sitting with her while she fell asleep at bedtime. Instead, I started leaving whilst she was awake so she would get used to settling without me there. It did cause a lot of upset initially but I went back in regularly and said 'time to go to sleep. Night night, love you.' and left again. Kept it consistent every time. Now she's used to it and will ask me to leave after I've put her down. This set her up for dealing with not coming into our bed at night. I dealt with night wakings in the same way. Picked her up, back in bed and said the same phrase 'time to go to sleep. Night night, love you.' each time. This keeps it consistent and boring for DD each time so she's not getting anything exciting out of night wakings. However, she's also getting reassurance from me.

It does take a few nights of persistence and consistency but it has made a big difference. She'll now either sleep in her own room all night or wake once and go back down much easier.

Good luck! We've got one due next month so was really under a time crunch to get it sorted 😬

Mine did this. We ended up moving him into a toddler bed then if he didn't settle one of us would get into bed with him and doze, let him fall back to sleep then retreat back to our bed. It meant he didn't get a habit of coming into our bed and we still could sleep in his bed for a bit if we had work etc the next day (or just too knackered to sit up awake by his bed!) It does get better but it now means if he is unsettled that only one of us is disturbed. Him in our bed was a nightmare! 😂

Thank you for your replies!
I have been thinking about moving her into a toddler bed and one of us could jump in rather than her in with us especially with a newborn! Maybe I’ll start looking at those this week 😬