Utterly depressed and bedtime is ruining my life

[Mushroo]

I’ve posted about this before but I don’t know what to do with my 20 month old.

Shes had the same routine since being about 8 weeks old - bath, nappy change, moisturiser, books, bed.

We used to be able to put her in the cot, leave and she’d fall asleep.

The last few months she just will not sleep. We start the routine at 7:30 and tonight, she’s only just fallen asleep. She’s in her cot for 8pm, and she just won’t sleep.

If I stay with her, she cries, if I leave, she screams and gets hysterical. Eventually she just falls asleep from pure exhaustion I guess at 9pm.

She refuses to let my husband do anything and just screams for mummy, he can’t even be in the room.

It’s affecting my relationship with her, I dread the evening and by the time she’s asleep I just want to go to bed myself because I’m so stressed the evening is ruined.

I don’t mind sitting with her (well, I do) but if she actually went to sleep I wouldn’t mind. But there’s no ‘nice’ bedtime, I get screamed at until she eventually falls asleep.

Weve tried earlier and that doesn’t help, just elongates the struggle.

She has a good 1.5 hour nap about midday, no screen time, generally happy.

Help because it’s actually making me depressed.

It's been very hot weather the last few months, my DD hated a bath before bed when the weather was hot, either she was too warm to sleep afterwards or cooler water woke her up and made her excited. She was always a warm baby.

Could you try editing the routine a bit, we moved the bath to the morning in the end and it worked much better to have some fresh air and exercise after dinner, she'd crash out straight after.

It might be a different edit for you, but there's no harm in trying something different if what you are doing is no longer working.

How much sleep has she generally needed thus far compared to what the books/websites say? That could help you work out whether to go for an early bedtime or lean into the later one.

Both of mine have low sleep needs, and at 20 months, they'd have been asleep at 8.00-8.30 for a 6.00 wake, nap of 1-1.5 hours, but more often near the hour mark. However, they'd been low sleep needs since birth – less likely, I think, if she's been pretty average until now.

Making the nap slightly shorter or earlier sometimes also helps with night sleep because they have more 'sleep pressure', but obviously there's a balance between 'enough sleep pressure to fall asleep easily' and 'overtired mess'.

I think it sounds like the midday nap should be completely cut. My second son cut his nap around 18 months - all children are different though so only you know if she is ready for that transition.

If she is screaming in the evening can you try gentle music or light projection? Sounds so tiring especially if she is waking up unhappy too.

Perhaps you could take a walk every night so your husband can try the bed time routine too.

This really isn’t forever but I really understand you being upset.

What is her food routine like? Any allergies that could be upsetting her? No gassy tummy?

Does she have a sleep comforter or cuddly toy she can go to bed with?

some decent info here @Mushroo

Taking my toddler for a drive some nights has been life changing for us.

If she’s already crying a ton, I think there’s a good case to be made for some type of sleep training may ultimately involve less crying… but first research methods appropriate for her age and settle on a method to can commit to trying consistently for 3-4 days so there aren’t mixed signals.

If its separation anxiety at the same time - then the solve for me for my eldest (I plan to do the same with my second) was building very strong emotional attachments with his cuddly "friends" from 1 year old. Started with one and I moved to 2 when he was waking in the night and using his hand to try and find his friend and crying whilst doing it, so with 2 he found them much faster and the crying stopped, then he moved it to 3 and I had to stop him expanding further. I've never had major separation anxiety at night since I did it and they are a huge part of his emotional support framework.

Get the Ferber Sleep Training book.

It's brilliant.

My daughter went down in her cot and slept all night easily, by the third night.

If she wakes up upset that suggests overtired too. I would lean into that and try and bring bedtime forward. Do you have blackout blinds? DD always struggled when it was lighter and blackouts helped. Sometimes they need more sleep for certain periods when going through developmental stages. I’d try a bit of a reset with an earlier bedtime, keeping the nap for now.

Yeh, honestly this was me at 10.30pm too. And it happened at this age for my first.

They don't cry because I know they need me and comfort them. I'm firm that we need to go sleep and can't play. Often it's a similar pattern to you and down at 9. But today is 10.30 and that's not rare.

We went with kindness and compassion for our children. But it's hard on my mental health tbh. The plus side is my eldest is through it and now a very good sleeper with no anxiety around sleep. Who knows if the compassion when she was awful helped or is just a coincidence. But I only like to think what we did made a difference because it came at a cost to me and it would be hard to think I did that for nothing. At least it was a relatively short time but it feels like forever when you are in it. I hope my youngest passes through it quickly.

I would find it more draining and heartbreaking if she was crying through it. Does comforting work to help take some of the stress of bedtime away?

Sharing this in case a very different perspective helps, you might utterly reject this approach and that's OK with me. There's no right answer

We think it happens at this age as they need the midday nap less but still need it

Thanks all. So the night before last my husband did bedtime in its entirety and it went really well. She was asleep with no crying by 8:20pm.

Last night, when he put her down she was asking really nicely ‘mummy please’ so we said I’d go and give her a hug. Then it all went wrong from there - she doesn’t sleep with me in the room (messes round, cries) but if I try and leave she becomes hysterical.

So I think maybe I need to not do bedtime, but it’s not a long term solution as my husband would like to go out sometimes!

I dont think it will have to be a long term solutuion, it might just take a few weeks though to break that association.

Yes I agree, nothing is ever forever, if it worked when your husband did it then just go with it for a while. You’ve had the pain for so long and he says he misses doing bedtime to let him share this, and you go and do something for yourself!