Really struggling with DS and his sleep, suggestions welcome (needed!)

[Nip]

DS is 21mo until last October slept beautifully, then out of the blue started waking at silly hours. We would go in, calm him down, sometimes a cuddle and back to bed.
Since the begining of December he has upped this by screaming blue murder and not going back to sleep 99% of the time.
He also gets up early (4am-5am-6m)and i know this could be where our problem lies because we bring him into our bed. (now before i get flamed, i did not want to do this, but DH insisted that we couldn't keep going back and forth for hours on end - which is what was happening!)
So here lies the problem, last night he woke at 1am and was screaming the house down, we left him for about 10 mins in the hope that he'd calm down, but he just got worked up. We tried and tried to put him back down but he wouldnt have it, and in the end put him into bed with us, he slept until about 4.45 then started performing again.

We really dont know what to do, DH wants to just leave him in his cot, but i worry about doing this because he gets very very worked up. I'm not worried about trying CC we actually had to do this when he was very young and after 1 night he was sound asleep.

We were thinking about perhaps taking the sides off his cot and putting bed guards on, so if he does wake he can come to us, and we can put him back. Perhaps he doesnt like being 'trapped' as such?

Thankyou for reading this far, any help would be fantastic.

What size of cot is he in? If it's a small cot he might just want more room.

The problem is that doesn't take much for something to become a habit at this age and before you know it he'll be in your bed all night every night. Ds1 (3.2) has been ill recently and I slept in his bed with him for a night. I have had to be really strict with him now that he is getting better as he keeps trying it on and shouting for me/dh to get into bed with him.

Ds2 (2.2) is also being a bit of a pain at the moment. We finally got him sleeping through just before Christmas but the last few nights he's woken up and had a real hissy fit. We tried to leave him to shout it out but he just gets hysterical so now I'll sit with him until he calms down and then put him back in his bed. I know that if we take him into our bed/give him milk etc he'll expect it/demand it every night and I'd rather have a few bad nights with him shouting and having to sit with him rather than going for the "easy" option and giving in.

This probably isn't much help but you have my sympathies. BTW, both of mine wake at about 5.30 every morning. It's not something we can change so we just go to bed early.

Unfortunately he is in a cot bed, so it's relatively large. The coming into bed has been going on for a while so i know its going to be a bugger to break. But perhaps i should try your idea and sit in his room until he calms down. It'll be easier to do it at the weekend since we wont have to get up for work, so can take turns in having a lie in!

Thanks for your info, its a great help to know how others do it

I know a lot of people think that even sitting with them is a mistake but it works ok for us and when you're sleep deprived you'll try anything!

Good luck!

Does anyone else have some top tips?

This may seem a bit odd, but is the cot bed still a cot or a bed? It maybe time to put him into a bed... I know you would have the obvious issue of him getting out and walking around, but you have to deal with that sometime anyway, and you just have to keep walking him back in there. (dd1 was in a bed from 16mo because she kept climbing out of her cot, but it was a good thing, she just hated being confined)

It sounds like he might be having bad dreams, in which case leaving him there will just make him more scared. If he's in a bed you can sit on it/lie on it with him, giving him the comfort he needs without getting him into the habit of being in your bed. I know it could be another habit, but I think it's a slightly less intrusive one, and at least at the end of it he will feel more secure in his bedroom because that's where he gets comforted.

The only thing I can think of with the early mornings is to treat it like another night waking (this is easy in the winter) and when you are feeling strong enough, take him back to his bed for a few mornings, giving yourself an earliest possible time for him to be in with you, like 6am. Then maybe his little body clock will learn about not coming in until a certain time. My sister has these clock things that have a big light up nose or something at the time when it's ok to get up, I know he's only little but if you start now by just pointing at it when you get him up it might be really useful for the future.

Have you tried a rapid return technique like they use on 'house of tiny tearaways'? Apparently (if you do it properly) it should only take a few nights to break the back of the problem.

I'm thinking about turning cotbed into bed, putting bed guards up.. if he doesnt have his grobag on he can SAS his was up and out of cot, but i guess we'll have to also use a quilt now, so that in a bed he can get out an walk, otherwise he'll be 'thud, thud, thud' across the landing

What is the rapid return technique? I'm not that rapid at the best of times, let alone the middle of the night!

lol @ thudding grobag toddler