We are absolutely at the end of our tethers. Every night ends in tears, and I don't just mean the 2 year old's.
As a baby he slept great, around 7 months old he went into his own room from being in ours, struggled a bit but got a good routine in the end and he was able to go to sleep himself after a story and a kiss goodnight. After I went back to work when he was a year old things seemed to go downhill and he needed more input from us - in the form of rocking/patting to get him down to sleep.
Then he moved from his nursery into a bigger room when he was about 17 months old, I feel like this was the big turning point and we have struggled to get him to sleep since. Its been getting worse and worse since then and I just don't know what to do any more.
(I'm 35 weeks pregnant, so that may well be affecting this ... although he's a massive daddy's boy and I don't feel like the pregnancy has upset him in other aspects).
He's now in a single bed because he was starting to climb out of his cot, and when put in there he was screaming, "get out! get out! out cot!" etc. he clearly wasn't finding any comfort from the encircling bars, and we needed the cot back into the nursery for baby No.2 so into a big bed he went. He calls it his big boy bed, and doesn't seem to have any fears/problems surrounding this ... except that he's now free to roam his room.
Routine:
- 18.30, begin bath/bed time. He has a bath every other night currently. Teeth brushed, get changed into PJs, stories and milk, lie down to sleep (with us)
- During this process he gets gradually more and more hyper. Running around his room, throwing himself onto his bed, jumping up and down, throwing soft toys from his bed around, giggling - making a joke of everything. No matter how quiet, calm and dark we try to keep the room.
- Currently we either have to lie with him or rock him, but he's throwing himself around the bed, hitting, kicking, biting, slapping etc.
- If left alone in his room he just stands talking and yelling at the baby gate until he gets upset.
He will fight and fight despite being obviously over tired and drooping. He's not falling asleep until around 9pm every night now, and will then get up somewhere between midnight and 2am and shout "daddy!" to be brought into our bed, where he will settle quickly and sleep until around 6.30 - 7am.
He generally naps around an hour in the day, seems to go down slightly easier in his bed for this.
Honestly we are so so tired, we have no time together, no evenings or time to ourselves, we aren't eating until after he's in bed due to work timings etc. We just can't carry on like this - can anyone help? Has anything worked for you? Should we be doing some sort of sleep training, have we completely lost the plot and all hope???