22 months - coping with illness without undoing all the progress we've made?

[grainmum]

Hi, my son is 22 months. For the past couple of weeks we've been on bedtime boot camp, basically just being really consistent with bedtime and letting him self settle, going back to reassure frequently. Got it down to 1 trip back to reassure after saying goodnight, and the same with night wakings.

Now he has a cold-virus thing. Last night wouldn't settle at bedtime until I eventually went and sat with him, then woke again at 1. He had medicine, a drink, then I sat with him til he fell asleep. Crept out after 5 minutes, he woke up again 10 minutes later so I took him into our bed.

My question is, how to be kind, loving and meet his increased needs whilst he's ill but minimise the impact on what we've achieved so far. Any tips? Really don't want to go back to square one....

You may need to return to the beginning with bedtime boot camp after the illness. But hopefully it won't take him as long to 'get it' second time around.

There is a case that would say it is kind, loving and meeting his needs to teach him to get good quality, restful sleep easily.

It may just needs a few nights of rapid return from your bed once he is better.

I did sleep training with the help of a sleep consultant with our DS who was a shocking sleeper. It was very effective, wished I had done it ages ago. When I asked the consultant about teething / illness she basically said that during those times when babies are really distressed and need their mummies you just do everything you can to comfort en get them to sleep. Holding, rocking, whatever works. Once they are recovered you can go back to the routine. According to her once children have learnt the skill to self settle they may need to be reminded after a bump in the routine but you don't go back to square one.

Sure enough, two weeks after sleep training DS went through a horrible couple of days of teething. It would have made me feel awful to not comfort or soothe him. Afterwards we went back to the routine with some minor hiccups but back on track v quickly. Hope your little one feels better soon!