tell me honestly how your 2.5 year old sleeps now / since birth please?

[inconceivableme]

Mine's a nightmare sleeper and has been since birth. DH and I are both broken through never getting a full night of sleep.

We've intentionally never left DS to cry as I couldn't feel comfortable with it but am seriously considering doing so soon.

My friend is a fully signed up attachment parenting advocate and tells me that DS is totally normal for his age and that the mums I know with kids of the same age who sleep. through the night most nights and self-settle to sleep are lying..... (?!)

I totally understand that younger babies wake frequently but surely by 2.5 years old they should sleep more consistently? He doesn't stop all day so must be tired.

Her coping strategies she recommends to us are to let him sleep in our bed, to nap when he does and to accept that he is normal and may not sleep through for another couple of years (!) She's a SAHM of 3 who home educates too btw.

He has to have one of us with him until he falls asleep. This can be around an hour each time, in addition to the rest of the bedtime routine. He wakes at least a couple of times at night, usually more, and we have to go to him and stay with him for as long as it takes or he screams and comes into our room.

DH is all out of patience and I'm almost there too. We've set up a travel cot in our room but even if we move him in there when he wakes, he cries and asks to be cuddled.

Help! Is my friend right?! Are toddlers who sleep well just fiction and lies?!

Sorry, meant ds 1 is the self settler - dream baby so far, but appreciate it possibly won't last.

DD has self settled from about 12 weeks, did some very gentle (ie 1 min max) CC. Dropped 3am feed at 7 months, dream feed at 9 months. Now sleeps 7-6.30 at 2.2

I can't see whether you said whether he still naps, OP? Dropping the nap (which was accidental, when we were on holiday) was the turning point for my then 2.5 year old. When still napping at noon - hour and a half to two hours - he was a nightmare to get to sleep, it could easily take an hour or more, sometimes two.

When he dropped it, he would be asleep within five minutes of finishing his bedtime story, though one of us still stays with him until he falls asleep. Now he very seldom wakes in the night, though take him fir a dream loo visit when we go to bed, and we still usually co-sleep.

16mo old ds started sleeping through at 10.5mo. I really hope it lasts!!

At around 7mo we learned that he sleeps better without us in the room despite earlier cosleeping and being in our room till 6mo, and in fact a room-sharing holiday at 8mo nearly broke us all.

I honestly believe "attachment parenting" does not work for all children. Just like GF type approches do not work for all children.

Ds is 2.8 - he started reliably sleeping through as soon as I stopped bf at 10 months. Since then he's had good and bad patches-I've just put him in a bed this evening so have no idea what the future will bring! He won't co sleep-is a total wriggly nightmare. He settles himself off to sleep after multiple stories