2-year old sleep killing me

[Cornflakes44]

Looking for advice on what to try with my just turned two year old. She was always an amazing sleeper as a baby. Self settled/ slept through from early age. Since she's been about 1.5 years old her sleep has gone crap. Regularly waking up in the night, hard to put down etc. It's getting worse and worse and currently she's waking most nights. It's taking between 2-5 hours to get her back to sleep. It's killing me. Both me and my husband (we take turns on who goes in) have work and a 4 year old so are already knackered without all this. Any suggestions of what we try? We've tried nightlight, white noise, letting her cry for 5-10 mins to see if she settles (she just escalates). Currently we go in calm her down, put her back in crib, stoke back, wait until she's asleep creep out. She starts standing up and crying again if she wakes up when we're creeping out.

Sometimes she just doesn't seem tired and we're just sat there waiting for her to fall asleep. This can take hours. She has a nap at midday. She usually sleeps between 1-2 hours. There doesn't seem to be a correlation between when she has a longer nap and her nights sleep. She goes down well and usually wakes between 1-4.

Any ideas very welcome. Thanks

Check out THE SLeep Charity website…..there is also a help line you can phone in the evenings 7 to 9 pM

Thanks for that. I'll have a look.

We did magic chair where you move further and further from them over a week but I don’t know if that’s what you need. Can you try dropping the nap for a bit and seeing? Later bedtime?

What time does she go to bed and get up? How much sleep is she getting during the day?

Ditch the nap

This sounds like split nights; which means she’s getting too much sleep, so she’s got no sleep pressure to stay asleep or quickly go back to sleep when she’s waking.

You can either push back bedtime or get rid of the nap. It won’t be instant, it’ll take 2 weeks or so, but then she’ll gradually get used to it and her night time sleep will be a lot better.

I have no advice but just some solidarity, DD is 21 months and has been the same since she hit 17 months. Last night was the first night she slept all night in months, it is exhausting and draining. Also have a 5yo who shares a room with her and I'm considering moving her back through with us because she's starting to wake her now too.
My eldest has always loved her sleep so this is all new to me, praying it's just a phase that will end very soon.

Does she eat well? My son sometimes does this if he doesn’t eat much of his evening meal because he is hungry. Goes back to sleep after a brief snack.

This is interesting. She loves her nap and will happily sleep 2.5 hours, and is showing no signs of dropping it like her sister did at that age but maybe we need to push her on that.

She's usually in bed by 6:30/7. Then wakes up 6:30-7. So a full 12 hours.

It's awful isn't it. The crying at night is definitely waking my 4 year old who's knackered and kicking off coz she's so tired. The whole house is done in.

We are going through something very similar!

Daughter has just turned two and for several months now has been a nightmare to put down at night (we put her down at 7.30 and some nights she's still up at 9pm). Then will wake up around 1-2am and scream and shout. When I've tried to settle her it's been awful and she's not gone back to sleep until gone 5am... she's been sleeping through since 7 months so I've been pulling my hair out.

But no problem with naps, can happily still sleep 2-2.5 hours. The only nights she goes down easily and sleeps through are her days at nursery where she refuses to nap! So i started reducing her naps over Christmas. Today she's had 1 hour and has gone to bed easily....fingers crossed for the night! I think she's too young to drop the naps altogether but 2 hours must have been too much.

This sounds just the same!

Hopefully you've cracked it now.

Ours will do 2 hours easily at the weekends so we'll definitely cap that and if it doesn't work ask nursery to reduce the nap or stop it all together. I'm hoping it works.

My 21 month old has a capped nap 12:30 - 2-30 (she'd happily sleep for 3 hours) and then is in her cot by 8pm - she needs at least 5.5h after her nap ends to be tired enough to not wake up before 5am!
I'd cap the nap and push bedtime back - 6:30 is very early!

I think I'm gonna try hour nap longest and bedtime of more like 7:15. If that doesn't work then cut the nap all together. She just seems so tired, sometimes asking for bed that I've always felt she needs a long nap at the weekends to catch up but this could be where I've been going wrong,

Hmmm well we haven't cracked it yet! Went to sleep ok and didn't wake up in the night but she was up at 5am 🤦‍♀️

Going to persevere with the 1 hour naps for a couple of weeks and hope it works its self out...

I think shortening naps and later bedtime sounds sensible, fingers crossed!

You won’t crack it in days, sadly it takes a fortnight or so!

And pushing bedtime back by 15 minutes a day can sometimes make it feel easier than a big jump.

Best of luck to you both!

Last night was better....took a while to get her to sleep but once down she slept through until 6am!

Tonight she's gone down with hardly any fuss so I've everything crossed.

That's good to hear. We had two good nights then she was up for three hours last night. I'm hoping it will just take a while for the new regime to kick in. We will get there!

Hi, just a quick update. We capped her naps at 40 mins and have started putting her to bed later. It's definitely affected her sleep as her wake ups are getting earlier and earlier. She's also taking less time to go back to sleep. However it has been every night for the past five days. Last night it was 9:30 and it only took 30 mins to get her back to sleep, so fine really. I'm hoping this week it gets earlier and even stops. It feels more manageable now though even if it is every day. So thanks for your advice it feels like it made a positive difference.

That's good to hear! I think as long as things are moving forwards it feels more manageable.

We seem to have stopped night waking with the changes and she's going down sooo much easier, but we are back to 5am starts 😮‍💨 but I'm a morning person so I can cope with that and I'm hoping will improve with age.