20 month old still needs so much help to go to sleep. Anyone else have this?

[terryandthechocolateorange]

SO my 20 month old daughter still needs to be either fed to sleep or cuddled when i'm not available.

She is looked after by my mum 3 days a week and she always manages to get her down for a nap but always has to cuddle and rock her a bit, bopping around her room until she nods off.

At home, I do bedtimes as she refuses to settle with my partner, and often it results in being fed to sleep (still breastfeeding because of this issue alone) or at least has to get on for a cuddle to nod off before I pop her down. She had terrible allergies, colic and reflux as a baby so we very much got into a routine of cuddling and rocking to soothe her, and it's never really gone away.

She's started sleeping through recently after 19 months of 4hr max stints, so i'm happy with this obviously, but I am so aware that she just cant settle without us.

She is getting way too big to carry around now, she lets me sit down while we cuddle which is fine but won't let my mum sit for some reason.

I try every other night to lay down with her, give her opportunity to settle herself but she just doesn't know what to do or how to settle.

Anyone else share a similar experience? Any tips? Will it end??

No advice but a hand hold!

My DD has just turned 2 and still lays in my lap to fall asleep.... I'm hoping she'll grow out of it soon...

No reasons for it except comfort and she does the same for my husband, mil, mum and sister.

CIO is not a method I'd use so I'm just going with it until it's a problem for me.

Sorry I'm not much help but you're not alone.

Hello, sorry no solutions here but a hug, as I am going through a very similar experience.
My little one is 20 months old, has allergies and had reflux as a baby. I stopped breastfeeding when he was 15 months, than took away the bottle during the night and now he sleeps through (most nights!).

However, going to sleep is a bit of a nightmare. He just doesn't want to sleep, let alone falling asleep alone. One of us has to be in the room and he just keeps playing, singing, jumping and turning until he's so tired he cries sometimes. Then he falls asleep in our arms or cuddled to us (he sleeps in a bed now, since he can climb down - he hated the cot with a passion).

I understand we are not alone there and it's far from unusual. I hope that with time he'll be able to learn to fall asleep on his own after reading a book.

Sounds perfectly normal to be op! Handhold. Won't be forever and if you're like any other mother of older children you'll look back wistfully!

Is it causing you massive problems? I don't mean that in a flippant way by any means, if you usually feed her to sleep and she (presumably falls asleep relatively quickly) and will also settle for other people and will then sleep through the night it sounds to me like everything is working pretty well.

I would be reluctant to change anything because you might find that if you do she starts waking in the night again and I know what I'd rather do! Or it might start taking her a lot longer to fall asleep.

Sorry if this isn't what you want to hear, but my 3 and a half year old still needs help. Though he has at least dropped his naps, so it's only bedtime. I use to hate it, but now I actually quit enjoying our cuddles at the end of the day. Especially now he has a little sister, it's nice to reconnect 1 to 1 every day.

My DD is the same OP, same age as yours as well but has never slept through the night. I'm still breastfeeding because it makes life easier but she has no interest in sleeping, and no clue how to settle herself. Only once has she ever dropped off to sleep by herself and that was in her bouncer when she was about 3 months old. Every other nap and bedtime has been a battle! Sometimes she doesn't nap at all in the day - they are my favourite days because she's likely to be asleep by 7pm and I get an evening with my husband! Bedtime regularly takes 1.5-2 hours if she's had a nap in the day, even if it's only a 20 minute nap. She is bright and funny, but together we've never cracked sleep. I've got no advice for you sorry, just some solidarity in hoping that its developmental and eventually they will get there. She'll be an only child at this rate!

Thanks all. It's particularly hard as there seems to be an army of mothers around every corner who will tell you their child self settled from 2 days old and sleeps 17 hrs at night.

@ParadiseLaundry
It has caused problems in the sense that my partner would like to get involved at bedtime and feels as though they cant. They do her bath, stories, PJ's etc but then it comes to actually drifting off, it has to be me 100% of the time. Aside from that, it's usually relatively painless and quick, taking between 10-20 minutes to get her down. If she does wake at night, she will more often than not have a quick boob then back off unless something is bothering her. Hearing about the struggles other parents have, I can't complain (also knowing I had my fair share of nightmare sleep before this!).