2 year old refusing to sleep

[SaraJS216]

For the last 5 or so nights, my 26 month old is refusing to be put in her cot (and can climb out now so I can't leave her - going to convert to toddler bed asap). She'll lie in my bed with me but gets hysterical if I try to leave to go downstairs. On a couple of nights she's eventually fallen asleep and I've been able to sneak out, but last night and tonight so far she's been awake for hours after her usual 7pm bedtime,

She still has a day time nap, she's exhausted by the afternoon so I don't think she's ready to drop it yet. She's always gone down so well before, I have no idea what's changed!

Has anyone been through similar and any tips pleases?!

I posted recently about a similar thing. Mines a little younger - 23 months - but was doing the same. Hysterics at bedtime and nap, asking me to leave the door open and come back, very upset if I left. She was absolutely fine if I stayed with her or even lay with her, but as soon as she suspected I was going - lots of tears.
Its not too helpful as I see that you can’t leave her - but I did end up leaving mine in the end, telling her I was just going to do some jobs/get a cup of tea etc. I had to really - we had a couple of nights where I tried to stay with her - it was chaos and she was up for hours.
Good news is, it only lasted a couple of weeks - she is back to being more settled now and will say ‘bye, see you later’ when I say goodnight and isn’t upset at all.

Meant to say, I felt that telling her what we were going to do when she woke up helped a bit. It seemed to calm her down and reassure her that I would be coming back to get her - when she was crying it seemed to be like she was scared that I was going.

Instead of dropping her nap completely could you cut it down? I wake my 2 year old after an hour otherwise bedtime is a nightmare!