Bedtime for 16 month old DD2 driving me crackers!

[pookamoo]

I hope this is a phase but it's been going on since mid December.

She has dropped to one nap a day, lunch time / afternoon. She is tired and ready for bed by 6.30, which is usual bath and bedtime.

DD1 (4) goes off to bed beautifully now, bless her, then DD2 spends about 2 hours or more feeding, messing about, and finally yelling her head off, until she eventually feeds to sleep.

She has decided Daddy is no good after dark, it has to be me.

So I have done NOTHING after 6.30pm since December, apart from try to get DD2 to go to sleep. Argh!

DH tries, but she just screams herself into racking sobs as if he is sticking pins in her or something. This gives me just enough time to load the dishwasher from dinner and then I am back upstairs to try feeding her again.

Often it's 10pm or later by the time she sleeps.
Poor DH feels snubbed and upset that he can no longer put her to bed. She used to go down easily for him, but it got more and more difficult and now this.

We are staying up till gone midnight these days just to see each other!

Tell my baby to just GO TO F***G SLEEP (in the words of Samuel L Jackson).

Any advice?

Oh and she is still in our room (we co-sleep) because although I had managed to get her to go down in her cot in the room she is supposed to share with her sister, she has decided that is not acceptable any more!

Her screaming would wake DD1 up if we tried to put her down in there.

bump! (as it's nearly bedtime!)

Didn't want you to go unanswered. No magic wands here but I have an uncooperative 16mo DC2 and a 4yo DC1 and feel your pain!

Getting DC2 to sleep in his cot is also a mission for us. He will go to sleep in it around 8pm (no earlier) but then wakes around 9-10pm and then only co-sleeping will do. We have a bed in his room so that DH and I can take it in turns (usually me during the week as I am a SAHM) and the other can get a good night's sleep.

I stopped bf'ing a month or so ago for medical reasons and he does sleep better since then, but getting him to sleep in the first place is more difficult.

My DH usually isn't home for bedtime so I don't have that option most nights anyway!

Maybe try a later bedtime? Or we have sometimes resorted to getting DC2 to sleep by rocking in a buggy downstairs then taking him up when we go up.

Our DCs don't share a room but I am also petrified of them waking each other. DC2 cried a bit last weekend one night and DC1 didn't stir at all. I also have downloaded a white noise app on my iPhone/iPad and put that next to DC2, which helps to block out the noise to each other, until we come to bed.

Good luck for tonight!!

Lots of sympathy, not much advice I'm afraid.

We were fairly harsh about bedtime. Had a strict-ish routine from 5 pm, bed at 7, nothing else offered after that except water. I do appreciate the misery it puts on a relationship. We had weeks of crying at a time but didn't mess about with the routine and she settled back into sleeping nicely again.

We never co-slept and DD was in a toddler bed at 20 months, so for us it was important that she would stay in bed by then.

Thanks... DH is just trying to resettle her. She went down about 8.45, and has been up every 20 minutes so far.