Hi All
I have an almost 4 year old daughter who struggles with sleep. For the last 12 months we have had to stay in her room for her to fall asleep and more often than not she wakes in the night and only really wants me over her dad. The only way to get her back to sleep quickly/avoid all hell breaking loose is for me to sleep in her room with her (I have a mattress under her bed for this). We dont let her sleep in our bed or sleep in her bed with her because she's such a fidget.
For context- she was a great sleeper for the first 6 months of her life, We were very lucky. After taking her on holiday at 6 months and her refusing to sleep in the travel cot, we started co sleeping just to survive the trip. When we got back home i could put her to bed in her cot but she would end up in our bed in the night. After 6 months of this i was hugely sleep deprived and in desperation we worked with an amazing sleep consultant and within a week she was back to being able to be put down at night to fall asleep and would sleep through with no problems. it was magic. That lasted from age 1 through to last summer as she was due to turn 3.
She began getting anxious at bedtime and would get very upset when we would try to leave the room (after her usual consistent bedtime routine of bath/stories/cuddles/bed). This got increasingly worse until she would become absolutely hysterical at bedtime and would kick and scream and honestly get quite violent. I found it very distressing so gave up trying to coax her through it and for the sake of peace stayed with her to fall asleep, as did her dad. At the time, i hoped it was just a phase (boy was i wrong!). The advice online for this sort of thing is "just gently lead your child back to bed and re settle them with minimal interaction, even if you have to do this repeatedly" which is all well and good, but if your child becomes absolutely feral then thats not really doable.
This had a knock on effect which led to the night waking, which again if we tried to get her back to bed and leave she would become hysterical in the night. The night waking and pressure to fix it gave me awful anxiety and insomnia and honestly made me feel quite unwell for a while so just to survive i told my husband that i just needed to go with the flow rather than try and fix it. Taking the pressure off helped ease my anxiety and insomnia but its basically been a year now of poor sleep for me in particular and im not sure what do about it.
Is it unreasonable to expect an almost 4 year old to be able to fall asleep at night and sleep through for the most part? I feel like sleep is such a personal and loaded subject and opinions vary wildly, but i'm struggling with feeling so tired and stressed about it.
Does anyone have any advice on what we should do? my husband says weve dropped the ball and should have been firmer, but this upsets me because i really did try and in the end had to just go with it to try and survive/get some sleep. It does feel like my daughter has me over a barrel sometimes but I also want to be responsive to her. its so hard to get the balance right. As i say i know sleep is really sensitive subject with many different approaches, so if you are kind enough to take the time to reply, please be kind! thanks :)