My 20 month old boy still doesn’t sleep through the night and gets up early. Me and my partner are at our wits end, we can’t cope with the exhaustion anymore.
No we don’t have friends and family that can help - we live at least an hours drive away from anyone we know, covid restricts us from travelling too.
Our son has never slept well. He goes to bed at 7:30pm and will settle himself. He is up at least twice a night and starts his day at 5am, sometimes he gets up more, occasionally he will get up once but can then be up from 4:30am.
He doesn’t cry, he screams. He wakes up and sometimes the neighbours. We have tried every technique you could name.
We took the side off his cot because he tried to climb it, this has resulted in him getting out of bed and coming to our room if we leave him to cry it out. We previously tried just putting him in bed with us, we slept less, but our son slept a little more - this has now also stopped working.
When he wakes up, we go in and he’s usually sat up in his bed. We give him a quick cuddle (only if he puts his arms out for one) lay him down, tuck him in and say goodnight. We then sit on the floor of his bedroom until he falls asleep.
We have tried leaving the room before he’s asleep but he starts screaming again. We thought we could try the gradual retreat method but we’re on week 6 and haven’t made it any further back than sitting next to the cot.
Earlier bed times result in getting up earlier to start the day, later bedtimes make no change.
He spends all day miserable, exhausted and whining. He has a nap for around 2 hours in the middle of the day. We’ve tried longer and shorter naps and that’s made no change or made sleep worse.
How do we make him sleep?