Someone please help! My daughter is 2.9 years and just won’t sleep.
We used to have a lovely routine at around 2 years old of bed at 7pm, lay down with favourite teddy, cover up with blanket and I could say love you good night and leave and that was that. She might wake once or twice for a dummy but she would settle quickly.
Now its bed at 8pm, offer her the choice of walking up or being carried so she has choice (everything being NO is another huge issue we have at the moment but that’s a whole different thread) put in cot, juice cup in reach (we’ve moved from juice to water but that’s not helping either) cover up, and if we try to leave she repeats “cuddle” over and over until either my partner or I sit on the floor next to the cot and fuss her back for 15 mins - 1 hour or we leave and she screams the house down.
Even when she’s finally asleep, she wakes in the middle of the night screaming “mummy cuddle, daddy cuddle” until one of us goes in and the whole routine of fussing her to sleep starts again and can last an hour or more.
We’ve gotten rid of dummies so she only had them at night time (almost like an incentive to stay in bed as she loves her dummy).
She has taken to waking up for the day around 4 or 5am. It’s killing me and my partner as we also have a newborn (who actually sleeps except 1 night feed, he’s so easy) and will just not settle again so one of us has to get up with her otherwise she screams the house down and wakes the baby up.
She no longer naps in the day, only if she has been in the car and is particularly tired. Even then she falls asleep far too late so we have to wake her up. If she does fall asleep earlier (before 3pm) then we leave her to nap for around 1 hour. The problem is, if she gets over tired then she gets night terrors and they can last 2 hours and are utterly horrendous. She’s had these since she was around 18 months though so we’re quite used to those.
Well done for getting this far if you managed it.
Lastly, she’s hyper. I mean she just can’t stop moving, talking, acting up for attention. My partner and I aren’t perfect, we’re so sleep deprived that it’s a struggle to be full of energy and we fell into a bad habit of letting her play with my iPad and watch kids YouTube. That’s stopped. Made no difference either.
I’m losing the will right now. I was up at half 4 reading all the expert sleep techniques and laughing as we’ve tried it all! Laying her back down and saying nothing, gradual retreat, controlled crying etc etc. We even bought a Gro Light that shows a sun when it’s time to get up and explained how it all works. Nothing.
Her vocabulary is really good so she could explain a fair bit if there was a problem but I get nothing from her!
I just don’t know what to do anymore! I’m so tired! I’m not asking the world. Even if she woke up but didn’t need me to settle her back down for an hour or even if she regularly woke at 6.
I don’t read in her room as she won’t settle with books. They’re far too exciting and she would scream at me until she could hold it and then wouldn’t calm down.
Baths before bed are not a regular thing as she’s such a water baby, she refuses to get out every time which ends up in huge tantrums so it’s far from relaxing.
I don’t think she’s ready for a big bed yet. Maybe in the next few months but right now, I think there’s been too much change recently with the baby. We’ve tried to keep everything as similar as we could for her so she didn’t have too much upheaval but these problems were there before the baby.
My partner and I try to be as calm as possible and explain things to her rather than having a “no, because I said so” attitude. I won’t lie, I really feel like screaming at her sometimes out of pure frustration but that’s not going to help either.
Any advice would be HUGELY appreciated.