Stairgate/sleep training support needed - 3.25 year old and new baby due

[Tjuice]

My formerly brilliant sleeper (7 til 7 from six months until) has been having night wakings for the past few 3 or 4 months, usually between 2 and 4am. This coincided with starting in a new nursery. I am also just about to give birth to DC2.
She goes to bed really well around 8pm - 3 stories and then we leave, but now needs some lullaby music on and a nightlight.

Then she comes into our room in the middle of the night and basically wants company - will go back to sleep in our bed (but that is not a sustainable option for us as light sleepers) or one of us goes in with her.

We have tried comforting and rapid return but she is a pretty determined kid so that hasn't worked.

So last night we tried a stairgate on her door, as advised by some mumsnetters and having read several books (Ford, Barker and Estivil).
She woke at 4 and got upset because she couldn't get out, we followed the guidelines and reassured her, coming back and forth to the gate at timed intervals.
But she ended up piling up all her toys by the gate to try and climb over.
Eventually, although I thought I had taken every one out, she piled up some teddies, managed to drag something over on the other side and climbed out.

Just after 6am, I gave up and got her dressed.

It's only day one, but I feel defeated already.
Of course, we could just put up with it, split it up and DH go in with her in the middle of the night but he doesn't sleep well with her either. And I need to be on night breastfeeding duty soon.

Any advice?
Am I being unrealistic to want her to go back to her formerly great sleeping habits?
Its not just about us, she also seems so knackered when she has broken nights.

I'm hard as nails when it comes to my sleep so I would have been telling my dd off rather than comforting her.

I had to do this with DS1 when DS2 was born. We put the stairgate on the door and whenever he got up we'd go to the gate.

1st time he got up we went in and put him to bed.

2nd time we'd go to the gate and say it's bedtime now night night.

3rd we'd go to the gate and say bedtime.

After that we'd just ignore him. It took about 3 nights and since then he has only woken up in the night when he's ill.

It's really hard listening to them cry but I had to do it in the end as I was exhausted. DS2 would be up wanting feeding etc then DS1 would want to be in our bed too.

We had to move stuff from his room as he would try to climb over.

Hope you can get her sleeping.

Too close to the new baby to do anything drastic IMO. We had success with a multi-pack of those horrible Kellogg's cereals, which he earned by sleeping all night in his own bed. Combined with a bunny clock we had it cracked in a couple of weeks. I think it's better to be neutral than angry if you can.

Thanks for your replies, appreciate it.

It is close to the birth, but I feel like now we've started this week...we might as well try

Think will move toys out and give it a few more nights, maybe build some rewards into it.

I just felt a bit down about it this morning - I've always been really hardcore about her getting good sleep on her own but felt like we had met out match last night with her resourcefulness at getting over the gate!