2 year old sleep, please help, I am slowly dying!

[kisaki333]

Ok, so I posted before and asked for advice, followed it,and still no improvement. I am starting to think my DD has a medical issue. Looking to see if there's anyone with similar experience.

So:she is nearly 2 and has always slept little. Life's too short to waste in bed type of thing.
Current schedule is wake up around 7.
Nap from around 1, 1.30 for about 1.5h. Anything less than this and she becomes a monster.
Then we start bedtime (bath, milk,book etc) around 8.30 but she doesn't fall asleep until 9.30 or 10.
All of this would be ok if she would bloody sleep through!
But no, in about 75% of the days, around 2-3Am she wakes up and wants more milk. And then sometimes she falls back asleep but more often than not she is then awake for 1-2 h. We co sleep. I hold her, i rock her, i sing to her, i leave her be, nothing works.
What worries me is that while she's awake it's not like she's playing or wants to do anything. It's more like she is staring into the void. Sometimes smiling, like she is remembering something funny. And often i tell her to close her eyes and go to sleep and she does close her eyes. But sleep just doesn't come.
Last night for example she spent almost 1h with her eyes closed but awake.
I suffer from insomnia - is it possible for a baby to have this too??!!!

That’s around 11.5 hours asleep - which might be too much at two; especially if she’s always had low sleep needs.

Sadly night wakings are still really developmentally normal at this stage but if she’s awake for a long time, it sounds like split nights, which are usually caused by too much sleep in 24 hours. Usually they suggest moving bedtime back rather than cutting the nap but as yours is already quite late; I’d probably start with limiting the nap. Try and make it earlier; and shorter. Give it ten days or so to make a difference.

It is possible she’s struggling to sleep, and more likely if you do too, but it’s worth checking thst first.

I do feel you. My two year old still wakes three or four times a night. Thankfully only for five minutes, but it’s hard going!

It's not 11.5h of sleep... she sleeps about 8h per night (remember she's awake for 1-2h) and a nap of 1.5h. So 10h per day!
I still track her sleep, so this is how much she slept in the past week or so (nap+nightsleep):
10h43m
10h48m
10h33m
9h59m
7h47m
12h41m
9h30m
11h1m
9h13m
9h56m
8h57m

I can't move her nap earlier because 1. she will refuse to go down and 2. Thats when i pick her up at nursery. Only reason she even falls asleep then is she sleeps in the car. On weekends she doesnt nap till 2 or even later 😥
We also tried cutting the nap but that didn't work. By 5 pm, she was already mental with tiredness .

Just wondering if anyone else experienced the same. Not so much the sleep amount as the part where she is awake but trying to sleep for a couple of hours per night.

Sorry no help at all but I could have written this about my daughter! Does your daughter do any sensory seeking etc as this is linked to sleep issues and is something we’ve noticed with ours. I’ve started doing lots of activity before bed (rather than winding down activities like they recommend) and it seems to have helped a little (she’s going to bed faster I mean - still takes 20/30 mins).

DS was like this! He was a beast for waking up multiple times through the night until he was around 3yo.

I used to joke that sleep was for the weak!

He's 13 now and happily sleeps for 12 hours or more if he can 😭

I know it's brutal but enjoy this time if you can, it passes so quickly. I do remember feeling bone tired at the time and wondered if/when he would ever sleep properly.

Is she overtired? Can you start the bedtime routine earlier? Say tea at 5, supper at 6, bath at 6.30, stories and 7 and then in bed by about 7.15/20?

From that list, she's averaging 11 hours a night, but the 12 hour 40 min day pushes the average up a bit. Let's say 10.5 hours. That's low sleep needs for the age, but not shockingly so, and similar to both my DDs. If that's all the sleep she needs, all you can do is figure out how to 'spend' that time.

If she needs a 1.5 hour nap, then that leaves 9 hours overnight – would you prefer 9-6, or 10-7? Try working to that timing for a week or two, and see if it helps with the split nights. It does get easier once they drop the nap and you can do something like 8-6.30. You may also find that if she's sleeping better at night you can play with the nap a bit more, say down to 1 hour nap and bring bedtime forward 30 minutes.

DD1 still sleeps roughly 8 to 6 or 6.30 at 4.5, the same as she did at 2.5 when she stopped napping. DD2, the same age as your daughter, notionally does the same 8 to 6 or 6.30 plus a 1 hour nap, but that's really slightly too much sleep for her, so we usually have a long bedtime or an early wake (and the occasional split night). But she's happy to cuddle with mummy or chat to herself for a bit before falling asleep, and it's logistically easier not to be putting the big one to bed whilst the little one stays up!

I was going to say this. I read a book by a sleep doctor and he said the most common cause of sleep problems and waking up in the night/waking up too early was over-tiredness. His solution is to put children to bed earlier (do it gradually, like 15 minutes earlier each day) and they'll start to feel more rested and go on to sleep better. An overtired brain in a toddler is running on adrenalin and they just can't sleep well. I did it with my children and it worked.

My daughter has never been a good sleeper. We have coslept but less since she turned 2 she's now 3.5

We incrementally try to improve different parts of her sleep and also try to keep on top of things that trigger poor sleep like her reflux and allergies.

At 2 we moved her to a bed from a cot, not that she ever used the cot!) And we did a longer bed time starting earlier so she had half an hour in her room with stories and quiet time toys before bed time. Routine helps. My daughter has to take a lot of medication and this happens downstairs just before bed. She knows as soon as we start medicines that it's time for bed. I would introduce a soft reminder of bedtime before bedtime.

We got the bed time routine better by us both being there so daddy could run and get the extra oat milk or water without having to call for him reducing the disruption. Once we had the bedtime better we moved to cosleeping in her bed rather than our bed with me slipping out whenever I woke up. This reduced us to 1 wake up a night for a while untill we had reflux flare up. Since Christmas and spending time when relatives and sharing a room with her we have moved to sitting next to her rather than cosleeping as she started wanting me from the moment to woke in the night rather than being able to settle herself occasionally. We are having a battle to keep her warm too at the moment with her kicking off covers and undoing PJ's if thick. We are trailing a heated blanket at the moment. For us cosleeping is a balance it does improve her sleep and our sleep bit solely or too much then reduces the quality of everyone's sleep.

When my daughter was having a nap she went to sleep about 8.30 and when she didn't and now doesn't have a nap she goes to sleep at 7.30. there's possibly scope to move the bed time slightly earlier but it's up to you. Whenever we have moved a bed time earlier we have done it by making the bed time routine longer for a few days by going up earlier but aiming to get into bed at the same time. Once that new time for going up was settled we reduced what we did each night until we were back to the original routine but now 15 minutes earlier. We have never pushed for the early bed times. We don't get home from work until 6.15 so there's no chance of a 6.30 bed time! We go up at 7 with the aim of getting her in her bed by 7.20-7.30. asleep by 7.30-7.45 which we managed 5-6 times a week but some time life conspires against us and she's in bed by 7.30-7.45 and asleep 7.45-8.

Getting sidetracked slightly, but @Superscientist , have you tried a wool duvet for your wee girl if she kicks stuff off when she gets too hot, but then gets cold? Or possibly wool thermals instead of pyjamas? Wool is better at avoiding the overheating stage. DD1 has a toddler wool duvet from M&S that wasn't too expensive, and it's really nice (having slept under it a decent amount myself when she was younger).

Thanks I will look into the duvet. She hates any wool clothes as they make her itch. All her dad's family are the same!

I learned the hard way that stopping night feeds and holding and rocking to sleep made a transformative difference. I never left them to cry (go in, say a soothing sentence, leave, repeat for hours...). The first 3 nights are hell, but it honestly can work.

The bedtime does sound unusually late, unless there's neurodiversity at play.

@kisaki333 How are you Op?