No sleep for over a year

[HollyMaingate]

Apologies for the long post but man desperately seeking help please!

We have two girls - 3.5 yrs and 9 months, both absolutely brilliant happy girls but have a huge problem with the 3 year old at night. She's a dream during the day and excellent with her little sister but I've now not had more than about 4 hours' sleep in a night for the last 13 months and probably only a 2 hour stretch at a time max which is really taking its toll, moreso as I have a demanding job and can't be functioning at 100% there as a result of this either! Prior to this (early last summer would being the last time she slept through) we've had patches of say 6 weeks where she's slept through but to be honest she's never been the best (colic as a baby, big operation when she was 1 plus the usual regular colds, teething etc!).

My wonderful wife has her hands full with the baby so I've been looking after the toddler at night but over a year is now getting ridiculous! She and the little one have moved in with my parents this week while I try and crack it as otherwise the 3yo wakes the baby all night and then it's all 4 of us walking around like zombies the next day. We tried this last month and they moved out for about 3 weeks but had no joy.

The problem isn't that I have to sit in with her, or sleep with her or even getting her to sleep - it's that she just regularly wakes and wants to know I'm there (sat outside her door). Trying to break it this week has been a nightmare, I've been letting her cry when she wakes for 2 mins, then checking on her, then 4, 6, 8 etc. but she's been scaling the stairgate so I've had to rush up while she's on top of it so that she doesn't fall off and down the stairs. The next day I bought a big 4 foot high dog gate, she was then getting boxes, stools, the rocking caterpillar thing - anything to help her climb up and over. The next day my wife emptied virtually everything out of her room so last night she got piles and piles of clothes emptying all her drawers to make a clothes mountain to climb up to try and get out - it's ridiculous (though would make a good comedy sketch!). Anyway, she's black and blue all over her knees and chin from climbing up it which is heartbreaking and this method doesn't seem to have any positive effect other than risking injury and even less sleep than if I sit outside her door or sleep on the floor in her room.

Has anyone here been through anything like this and have any advice on getting her to sleep well at night? If I'm at the bottom of the stairs and call up she seems to be happy with that as she knows I'm there - she doesn't seem to need to see me - but obviously I can't be doing that when wife and baby are home...

Thanks in advance, willing to try anything!

What worked for me:

Earlier bedtime as overtiredness caused mine to go into overdrive.

No screen time for an hour before bed time.

Story CDs once they were settled in bed. (After their bedtime story with us) They were allowed to listen to these if they woke in the night - 9 times out of 10 they would fall asleep again. Choose calming, gentle stories or music.

A folded duvet on the floor next to our bed that they could come and snuggle into if they were lonely.

Sometimes they would just come and get into our bed, but with all the other measures in place that happened less and less often.

I do remember one night when there were so many people in our bed that poor DH fell out of his side. He was so tired he just stayed asleep on the floor.

It will pass. In the end we all just do whatever works best and they do outgrow it eventually.

Haven't read all the replies but my DS is 5 and has some sort of separation anxiety. He will go off to sleep ok but wakes any time between midnight and 4am. We let him come in with us and he goes straight back to sleep. As soon as he moved into his own bed, aged 2, we put the baby gate on the landing so that he could only get out of his room and into ours. It's not ideal but he needs the reassurance that we're there, and this way we all get a decent night's sleep. I doubt he'll still be crawling into our bed when he's 16! Good luck OP.

This is all absolute madness. People falling out of bed, people sleeping on floors.
Sleep is paramount to health. It is really really important that everyone in the family has a good night's sleep.
You need to dole out a heap of tough love to get everyone sleeping properly in their own beds. The people who think this is cruel - in my opinion it is far far crueller to have your entire family suffering from chronic exhaustion.

Thanks for the replies and sorry for the late one from me!

Friday - bedtime went very well, my wife read her The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep after bath and she actually fell asleep while reading it. She and the baby went to my parents house for the night and I had a terrible night with the 3yo, emptying the contents of the drawers and wardrobes to make a mountain to try and climb over the gate etc. She was also asking for mummy which is a new one at night so that marked the end of mummy+baby staying elsewhere and they've been back since. As of about 2am she ended up in bed with me.

Saturday - didn't want to go to sleep at all, just kept getting up so we adopted the 'fine you please yourself approach' which worked pretty well in that she got bored in the end sat outside the baby's room while my wife was putting her to bed and took herself in to her own room and went to sleep by herself - we were very pleased with that! After that though she appeared a couple of times eventually ending up in my bed again.

Sunday - Same again, though I was so exhausted I fell asleep on the sofa (been working on renovating the house from dawn til dusk as had to get a room ready for my wife's sister who has come to stay for a fortnight). Anyway my wife woke me up at 2am and she was fast asleep on me on the sofa, I had no idea she was there and no idea how long she'd been there for but she was absolutely sparko! Took her into my bed and my wife slept in her room.

Today - my wife has spoken with the health visitor who has said usually they would talk it through on the phone and get a plan together for us but feels we're certainly a 'special case' (especially as we have a little one to consider too I think) so they are sending their sleep expert round to see us this week at some point to run through everything we do/have tried and formulate a plan. A big relief!

For those that aren't quite as 'deep' in as us (or who don't have a baby as well) - the HV did say on the phone that the usual way to fix this is just to repeatedly take them back to bed, saying absolutely nothing, time after time after time until they stay there. And that after 2 years old stair gates shouldn't be used as they climb over them!

Hi OP, I was wondering how the sleep situation is now?