Nearly 3 year old still waking multiple times a night

[wapphighwood]

After any suggestions or words of wisdom. My dd is nearly 3, has been a bad sleeper since birth, didn’t sleep through until way past 18 months and that only lasted a few months until had to take sides off cot as was climbing out. She goes to sleep ok, we do need to stay nearby e.g. tell her just standing by the door while she drifts off. It can be 7.30-8 as she does a long day in childcare 4 days. Usually she then wakes about 10.30 crying but can be quickly resettled in her own bed. As the night progresses she will wake again, we try to resettle in her bed by holding hand for a minute then retreating, more often than not this won’t work and we will spend up to an hour putting her back into bed. If we shut the door she just cries. We’ve tried increasing the gap between going in to her but she never gives in, up to an hour when we stop on advise of a sleep consultant.Eventually she ends up in our bed and sleeps well until 6. One of us has to give up our bed and sleep in the spare room, she won’t settle if all of us are there. She seems just to want to be close to us, she stirs in her sleep and reaches out to touch us and relaxes back to sleep. We’ve tried keeping her in her room with one of us on the floor but even then she gets out of bed and tries to sleep on floor with us. We’ve tried this for weeks. Part of me thinks she spends a lot of time in child care so needs her contact with us at night, although she does get lots of attention on the time we are with her. I’m expecting a baby in the new year, I would love to get her sleeping better by then but don’t know what to try next, or should we just accept she needs this comfort and go with it until she grows out of it?

At 3 years old and used to cosleeping, it's going to be very distressing to change this. It will be very challenging and involve a lot of crying.

You need to ask yourself if it's worth it? And if you have the emotional resilience to deal with all the distress now you are pregnant.

It might now be that finding ways to make a family bed situation will be best for everyone? Within the next few years she'll be more bribable and better able to deal with the change.

My 2 year old ds still woke every night for milk. We have been implementing a series of modifications which seem to be helping but the most significant seems to be getting him to drink lots during the day. Made a big fuss of choosing a special cup and he has dilute (like squash dilute) juice, we stop every hour for 'claps' when he drinks his juice and everyone claps and cheers (the other dc properly on board with this!). He's gone from drinking 70ml to nearly 300 ml a day, and has begun sleeping better, sleeping through maybe 3/4 nights a week. He was having so much fluid during the night that now he just simply doesn't need as much I suppose. Would this help OP?

Thanks for the responses. The drinking idea I’m going to try, she doesn’t drink much in the day and drinks a fair bit at night.