18 month old sleep still awful..how to improve, at end of tether with it

[roseopose]

DD has never slept well. For as long as I can remember she has cried in her sleep every hour or two, if left she wakes up and can then be awake for 2+ hours. After trying settling her in her cot night after night we started co sleeping, me and DP taking a night each in the spare room,because that way she wouldnt cry more or wake herself up crying, and it maximised the amount of sleep we could have.
I naively thought it would just sort itself out as she got older but if anything its worse. She used to stay in her cot til 3/4am,now its more like 11pm-1am. In addition, she isnt going to sleep until 8pm or later despite being put down at her usual time, 7pm where she used to be asleep by 7.15 with some back rubbing to settle her. She does sleep in until 7.30am which is something but she wakes whoever is sleeping with her constantly kicking and shuffling. Naps wise, shes barely doing 45 minutes a day and often takes over 30 mins to settle. I really don't know what to do to fix it! I know we took the path of least resistance and now its come back to bite us. Please does anyone have any suggestions? We've tried less layers, more layers, calpol to see if it's teething pain, keeping her up later, putting her down earlier, shes fed and had her bedtime milk, tried nightlight, no nightlight, but she still periodically cries. I'm starting to absolutely dread nighttime and I feel like I never get a break from her, being with her most days then most of the night too

Hi OP, sorry I don't have any real suggestions, but just wanted to show some solidarity. Although I've never co-slept, my little girl is 17 months and has never been a good sleep either. I'm sure you've heard about the 18 month regression? Do you think there's a chance your little one is going though this? Hopefully time will improve things, this is what I keep telling myself too 🤞🏼 I done some very gentle sleep training to get my little girl to self settle at the start of the night, as opposed to breastfeeding to sleep which she has done since the day she was born. It worked well, however it went to pot when she started getting a molar through. To encourage her to self settle I began by helping her to settle on a mattress on the floor, then eventually got her to settle in the cot, reducing the amount of contact every few days. There's was a lot of crying and it took about 3 weeks in total, but she's now going to sleep herself and began only waking once. As I say though, this was short lived due to teething and I also think we are approaching the 18 month regression. I hope things improve for you soon xx

You baby sounds exactly like my 15 month old granddaughter. She’s been a dreadful sleeper since day one, lots of night wake ups, short daytime naps either in pram or car or being fed to sleep.
She started nursery school in January two days a week and within 3 weeks they had her going form 40 minute naps in a pram to 2 hours in a cot. So my Dd has started to use their method- put in cot and keep laying her back down whenever she stands up, and keep gently rocking the cot, also have white noise going. First day it took 30 minutes, second day 15 and by the third day 5!

My Dd started the same technique last week and granddaughters sleep is not so much better already. Last night she only woke once and went from 7.30 until 6.30!

Thanks both, I wonder if maybe I haven't got a very good tolerance for her crying! I can do about 5 minutes of listening but then I'm straight in there. The problem is she tries to get me to play if I go in so I feel like I make it worse but then if I leave she cries..rock and a hard place!

With the gentle sleep training methods you go in quite quickly when you hear her cry and don’t leave the room at all when she’s crying.

I was exactly the same with mine, even know I can’t bear listening to a baby cry and I’m 57🤣

@roseopose I'm the same, I can't handle her crying. With the method I used, I didn't leave the room at all (well until she was asleep) and it still worked. It was still extremely hard watching her cry and not just giving in and breastfeeding her, but she adapted so quickly. I started by rocking her, then lying with her on a mattress next to her cot, then with just my hand tapping her, then hand resting on stomach, then patting in the cot, and finally I can pop her in the cot and she babbles herself to sleep. This method takes a little longer I'm led to believe but I preferred to do it this way as I wanted to be with her. Good luck with whatever you decide to do and I hope things get better for all of us soon x

How does she fall asleep at bedtime and for naps? Is she fed or held to sleep?

If she's only napping for about 45 minutes she's likely to be overtired, which will affect her nighttime sleep as well (weirdly overtired babies find it harder to fall asleep and settle between sleep cycles) so you need to break the cycle somehow.

Do you want her to sleep in her cot all night and for naps? Or are you happy cosleeping? If you want her sleeping in her cot you will have to do some kind of sleep training, there are gentle methods you can try (didn't work with mine sadly, but they do work for some people). To warn you - there will be crying and if you want to make changes you will have to tolerate some crying. Personally I decided to tolerate crying in the short term for less crying overall in the longer term, I did controlled crying which is not fun but works pretty quickly. Some people are dead against it. So it depends what you are willing to do and how desperate you are. A major motivating factor for me was wanting baby to be well rested (as well as me obviously, I'm a better parent when I've had better sleep).

Neither, naps she has a story then goes into her cot, I used to lie on the floor and rub her back until she went to sleep and same at bedtime but now she wont lie down like she used to if I'm in there, just tries to get me to play so I've been putting her in her cot with a book for naps and she'll either fall asleep or entertain herself quietly for a bit. She basically doesn't have time for a nap because its taking her so long to settle that it's time to get up again. She has lunch at 12, wondering if I need to rejig things so she has a nap earlier if shes overtired. Today she's been up since 7 and I put her down for a nap at 1, shes still rolling round her cot laughing so I expect she won't be having a nap at all today!