19 month old sleep tedium

[ohthegoats]

When does the whole 18 month sleep regression end?

It's so flippin' boring. We're back to this time last year - waking every hour or so during the night, refusing to go to bed/sleep even if 'settled' for bloody hours, only being willing to be settled by me so I have to do them all.

Only now I'm back at work, so it's even worse.

Ours lasted about a month, I think (compounded though by a 12-day long haul trip in the middle, so jet lag thrown in). In the end, I cured it by accidentally doing 'extinction' crying. Put DD down for the night and for various reasons didn't attend to her immediately. She cried for 20 minutes, then passed out and started sleeping through again.

A friend also recommended doing timed return at this stage (something I'd not done before). So, leave them for 2 minutes, go in reassure, then leave straight away (even if still crying), leave for 3 minutes, etc. This also worked for us when we had another blip around 24 months. DD would get momentarily even more worked up when I went in to reassure, but I think the first evening I only had to go in something like 7 times and the next evening only a couple and then she was fine. You have to be pretty steely though which is why I always have to do the sleep training, rather than soft-touch DH

Last night I ended up in the spare room with her at 1am, which made her sleep immediately. She woke up every 2 hours though, but was relatively easily settled. It's just taken me almost an hour to get her down for a nap, even though she has been on her knees for most of the morning due to swimming at 9am. It's just infuriating.

Thanks though - in our house it's me doing sleep stuff too (in terms of training), even though it's him that's actually bothered by lack of sleep more than me. Not quite sure how I drew that straw.

We've just put her in a bed, since she hasn't slept properly in her cot in yonks, so makes no difference what she gets put down in to. Is going to make sleep training harder... I've left the cot in one piece for now, maybe I'll delay dismantling it.