Rapid return/sleep training (not CIO or CC) when you co sleep?

[DuelingFanjo]

My two and a half year old will not stay in bed. His bedtime is sometimes as late as 10pm. It's gone nine and I am in the bath, have had no dinner and DH is downstairs with DS. I need him to sleep earlier because we have to get up at half seven for him to go to nursery and me to work.

I am utterly fed up with it because I have no time for myself in the evening. If I take him upstairs he will just get off the bed and stand at the top of the stairs calling for daddy.

How the hell do you train a toddler to go to bed and stay in bed if they can just get up and walk away over and over.

Argh, I feel like an idiot for posting now. He used to fall asleep on the boob but now, even though I still breastfeed, he's less and less likely to do so. I read stories and stroke his head and feed him and he says 'I'm not tired' and 'I want to go downstairs' and sometimes I just stay in bed while he yells for DH and DH does nothing to get him to sleep because he can't.

I just want him to go to bed when he's clearly tired and stop fighting sleep so that he's awake in the mornings.

It's really hard work. I bf dd until she was 29 months (now 35 months) andnow I lie with her until she falls asleep. We cosleep, which is fine, but I.am expecting dd2 in August and am finding it really hard to get comfy in bed with no room!
Once dd is asleep Ieave her in our bed and go for dinner etc but she still wakes up pretty much every hour.

We dropped naps a month or so ago and that has helped, it was led by her really. Now she falls asleep around 8/9pm which is much earlier than before. She still had nap when she is really tired but then falls asleep really late that night.

Could you change your lo's naps? Maybe make them earlier?

To be honest I think he is dropping his nap, maybe this is just a period of time I need to battle through?

He naps when he is at nursery sometimes but not always. I don't really want to tell the nursery to keep him awake but he does sleep so much better if he's not had one at all.

Despite this recent disruptive evening behaviour I have now had 3 nights (Not in a row) where he's 'slept through' and that has NEVER happened before! each time I have woken up and thought' it's light, I can't remember him waking me to feed!' and it's been amazing! Maybe he is just changing his sleep patterns and I need to drop the nap, take him to bed earlier (before he gets to that overtired silly stage) and look forward to night after night of sleeping though (PLEASE!) :)

"Once dd is asleep Ieave her in our bed and go for dinner etc but she still wakes up pretty much every hour."

Oh and DS does this for the first part of the evening, though it's every 2 hours with him.

No idea really and no words of wisdom, but watching with interest. My DS is only just 2, but on average I spend about 3-4/a day trying to get him to sleep (naptime and bedtime combined). We co-sleep and he's breastfed. Today he woke up at 9.45am, which is great of course, but gets the whole day of out sync. He still doesn't manage with no nap, so I spent 2 hours today lying on the bed with him (him on the boob most of the time) and he then finally fell asleep at 3pm and I woke him up at 4pm. He then fell asleep at 10pm and has already woken up twice. Life is miserable! I've now set the alarm to wake up at 8am and I'm determined to get the normal routine started tomorrow. Sleep is hell!