17 Month Old Takes 3-4 Hours to Sleep

[George1993]

Hello,

We are having a tremendous amount of difficulty getting our daughter to sleep. She is 17months old, still breastfed and walking very well. She is healthy, giggling etc...

However, her sleeping is absolutely awful, and putting a serious strain on us. I am training as a teacher, and my partner is pregnant again and every night it is taking us at least 3 hours to get her to sleep, most nights more. We have no idea what to do, and have tried pretty much everything it suggests online (so far as we can tell), except 'cry it out'.

The process of getting her to sleep is becoming too much - generally we will both rock her too music/singing until she is asleep on us, then we put her down. Most nights; I will rock and sing to her for 15 minutes and she will fall asleep, I'll put her down, she sleeps for 30 minutes, and is wide awake for at least 3 hours. We do this at about 7pm.

We have tried doing this earlier (today for instance) but exactly the same has happened. She has never been a good sleeper but this is the hardest it has been.

Our general daytime routine is:
Wake up 7-8am
Breakfast 8.15am
Lunch 11.30am
Nap 12-2pm
Dinner 5.30pm
Bed 7pm
(Rocking etc sleep normally by 10.30pm)

When she wakes up after the initial 30 minute sleep she is very alert and giggly. I would say this is a regression, however this has been going on for at least 3 months.

We don't know what to do - we have already asked for a pediatricians help but they never got back to us. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
George

At OP - I did my technique at a slightly younger age, maybe 14/15 months?

Our daughter is 18 months old and we have had similar problems. I agree with the others who suggest later bedtime and possibly limiting the nap to ensure enough sleep pressure is built up. We found if we try bedtime too early she will treat it as a late nap. She wakes up 6.30-7am, naps around 12 which we limit to 1.5 hours, and bedtime is 7.30-8.

I don't agree that all babies necessarily need to be trained to self settle, it is a developmental stage (if you are happy to wait!) - we still feed to sleep and night waking has naturally reduced with time and she is sleeping through more often.