22 months and terrified of bed. Help please

[ethimum]

Any experience on this topic would be great. my daughter has never been an amazing sleeper. Oddly enough from the age of 17 months she did roughly 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off sleeping through but would settle fairly easily when she woke.

Now at 22 months its horrendous. Since about 12 weeks ago (nothing happened then to trigger this to my knowledge) she just strated really not wanting to go to bed and making a real fuss when prior to this she was great I could put her in her cot, say night night then leave the room and she would be asleep in 5 minutes!

Now it starts as soon as the plug comes out of the bed "no bed mummy, No bed daddy, please no bed, please. book, no bed, cuddle no bed" and it carries on like that. she will then be ok at book time but as soon as either myself or my husband evens turns to leave the room she starts screaming. I have been advised thousands of times to just let her cry it out which is what we have done and it has seemingly made things worse, the crying and begging is worse thn ever, she now regularly gets so upset that she poos herself. even if she does end up tiring herself out with all this and falls asleep then she still wakes in the night when we cannot ignore her begging and crying so one of us ends up sleeping on her floor. I genuinely feel that she is scared, I have changed the room around which has made no difference, she has a nightlight, I have taken the bars of the cot since she can get out anyway but no difference.

we have been away this weekend for a wedding and she ended up sleeping with us as we could not subject everyone to the screaming, she of course slept beautifully and without waking but then last night putting her back in her room and leaving her in there trying to get out just felt like punishment when she hadnt done anything wrong.

sometimes one of us lies in there for up to an hour at bedtime but as soon as we creep out she is up like a meerkat in sheer panic.

Has anyone else gone through this please?

We didn't have anything this severe with DD (now 3.10) but a thought that occurred to me is when you say you've tried CIO what exactly do you mean? Literally leaving her to cry until she falls asleep? If so you might want to try a halfway house where you leave the room but go back as soon as she starts to cry or at least every 5 mins. That way she will know that she's notnbeing abandoned and you'll also be reassured.

If you have done hardcore CIO then I think there may need to be some re-establishment of trust too - do you explain to her what is going to happen? If not I think thay would be a good idea -22mo shoukd be old enough to understand that you are coming back.

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

I've tried hardcore cio but then on weak nights I go in and put her back in bed without talking and tuck her into bed and leave again sometimes a couple of times. Maybe I do need to try a more controlled crying route but will that stop her waking at night? Who knows? Thanks for replying

No worries. I think you also need to try to be a bit more consistent with what you do - there seems to be quite a lot of variation and thaat probably leads to confusion for her and lack of confidence for you.

Op what's her routine? Wake time, nap time & length & bedtime?

My ds went through a stage around 20-22 months where he fought bedtime & took forever to go to sleep - it took quite a while for me to realise that it was because he wasnt tired enough. He was still having a 2hr nap approx 1-3pm & I was trying to put him to bed at 7-7.30pm, cue him freaking & taking til nearly 8.30pm to fall asleep.

He wasnt able to cope with no nap, so I tried waking him after 1hr but he was foul & grumpy, so we opted to stick with the long nap but accept that he'd need a later bedtime while he continued napping. Put bedtime to 8pm & he went down fine, straight to sleep.

Just might be something worth considering.