is there any logic to this?

[chocchips]

Hello everyone :)
My dd (22mo) is an appalling sleeper and has been since 6mo. She is up at 3/4 times through the night, sometimes 2/3 hours at a time.

We have a spacesaver cot and she hasn't got loads of room in it. Ive heard the transition to bed can be v.hard sometimes so I'm planning to do it now whilst things couldn't get much worse.

She has to sleep through at some point (please?!!!) and my worst nightmare is her sleeping through only to then ruin it with toddler bed.

Is there logic to this?? Am I setting myself up for a fall? Not like it gets much worse than this ...

Our sleep goes in a cycle. Very simple version we go through stages non-rem sleep, them we go into rem sleep and then we all partially wake. We then start the cycle again through the night. Each cycle lasts around 3 hours on average.
Partial waking is when we all stir and check our environment. If nothing has changed you fall back into non rem sleep and you are unaware of stirring. If something has changed - you need the loo, your other half is snoring , your cold - you then wake up.
With a child if something has changed from how they fell asleep to partial waking eg parent not in room, light off when it was on, dummy fallen out, was on bottle, was being rocked. This will cause them to wake up.
Is something changing from when your child went to sleep to when they hit the partial waking stage. It could be the smallest thing.
How they go to sleep should be how they stay asleep.
Another tip. An hour after they have fallen asleep stroke their arm, stir them very slightly so they move back to the beginning of their sleep cycle. This can help.
A little tip to moving to a bed is to make their bedroom unstimulating and safe. Put a gate on the door frame so if they get out they can't play or do harm to themselves.
Good luck.

Thank you for that, absolutely everything you say makes sense.

Unfortunately she will only sleep when one of us is in the room. I know this is bad etc but the other option is for her to cry and cry. She cries yo the point of headbutting and vomiting but she also wakes up and upsets my next door neighbours dd, which is not fair so I just can't leave her yp cry.

I feel like we have no options any more :(

Don't leave her to cry that's awful for all involved.
Put her to bed late like 9. 00 so she is really tired. Do a little routine like song, book and then have a saying. Eg night love you. You then lay her down and leave.
She will instantly stand in her cot and scream.
You go back in. Don't talk to her. Lay her down and leave.
She will stand up and scream.
You go straight back in and lay her down.
You will repeat this a million times that night for a few hours. It will be horrendous and you will be on your knees and be cursing me.
Keep going. She will give in and fall asleep. The next night do it again. It shouldn't take as long. It works. It's called rapid return. If you give in it teaches her to scream to get her own way.
I hate controlled crying I think it is cruel.
There was an amazing programme on Chanel 4. It was live and showed how it works. And how frazzled the parents were doing it.
Just be strong you are doing it for her health and welbeing.
Good luck.

Have you ruled out reasons for her waking? Teething, silent reflux, food intolerance, sleep apnoea (does she snore), are you waking her?

My daughter sounds very similar to yours - she would vomit and throw herself around the cot if we left her for even a minute, which would result in bruises. So we could never do CIO.

She did however love her a bed. At 17 months we put her on a mattress on the floor and she slept much better. No wandering around or anything. I think she thought her cot was a cage.

Anyway, she's an awesome sleeper now. At 3.5 yrs we still give her a cuddle to sleep but she nods off in less than 2 minutes and sleeps from 7pm-6.30am.

It was a bit of a learning curve getting her to this point though, so much so that I've blogged about my experience to help other mums in the same situation. Here's my post on transferring from cot to bed. mydaughterwontsleep.com/2014/04/10/is-the-cot-a-cage/

There maybe something else on the website that will help you too.
Good luck with it all and best wishes