17 months - Should we sleep train?

[sleepymummy2019]

Baby girl is 17 months and has always been a poor sleeper. We’ve never been happy with the idea of sleep training and have coped by bedsharing, letting her feed all night, etc etc. When she wakes in the night (a million times) she’ll cry until I let her feed. The last 6 weeks she has been waking for a 2-3 hour stretch in the night and even harder to transfer into her cot at the start of the night, so I’ve put a mattress on her bedroom floor and we’ve been sleeping there to avoid the disruption of her waking, crying and being moved into our bed.

Last night she was awake every 30 minutes shouting for milk. I’m on call at work for the next 24 hours and knackered. I work in the NHS and don’t know what will happen over the next few weeks.

I feel like we have no choice but to sleep train. She’s so stubborn that I feel the only viable option is cry it out, patting etc will just annoy her. We’ve never left her to cry and it’s horrible to think of how she’ll feel if we leave her alone and crying. I hate the idea but I don’t know if we can keep on like this.

Does anyone have any advice? Any similar experiences that may shed some light for us?

Thank you so much, sorry for the rant

I’ve not sleep trained, but that’s because DC1 (DC2 is very young) slept 12hs or so through the night consistently at 15mo (although I realise all children are different). No way should you be putting yourself through such a stressful situation with your workload outside the home. I wouldn’t hesitate to train her, it’s in the best interests of the whole family- you have needs too. She must be shattered if she’s up every 30 mins. Just to add, I was still breastfeeding DC1.

Sending solidarity and support, be confident in your choice go help her learn this vital skill (sleep)! Now hopefully someone else can come along with the practical stuff

In your shoes i absolutely would. She needs to be getting better sleep and you do too.

Yes, I would in your shoes..., Although before you do have you heard about this lady;
I followed her advise and it helped us.
Best of luck!

Oh my goodness that sounds dreadful. We had a poor sleeper and eventually over christmas when he was almost one I couldn't do it any longer and we got a sleep consultant to help. I followed all her advice to the letter and it was hard but 4/5 days later he was sleeping through and it's been amazing ever since.

You've got to weigh up the impact on your mental health aswell.

At 23months DD started waking at 3am and wanting to feed until morning (after previously waking a couple of times a night and quickly feeding back to sleep).

What we did was stopped co-sleeping (she'd been starting off in her cot and coming in bed with us when she woke) and switched to bottles entirely and then gradually watered down all the ones other than the bedtime one. After a couple of months she slept through.

Meant we could take turns getting up to do the nighttime bottle (after a couple of nights she was only waking once),

We did have to 'lose' the bottles to break the habit of the bedtime one later on though.

Could it be the 18 month sleep regression...our little boy is now 20 months but for a good 4-6 weeks he started waking up loads during the night for some milk...me and my husband found it so hard to get through with disturbed sleep as we were so used to our little boy sleeping through from around 6 months...stick with it and I'm sure it will pass xxx