18m old sleeping’s getting worse

[LavenderAndLillies]

Hoping someone on here has some advice, I don’t know what else to do. Our 18 month old has always been a terrible sleeper (waking 4/5 times + in the night, occasionally every hour), but she’d only wake for about 5 minutes and as soon as I’d fed her then I’d be able to put her back down in her cot (semi-awake) and go back to bed myself.

For the last 4 months her sleep’s been getting progressively worse and it’s got to the point where she will not go to sleep at all unless I or my DH are in her room and holding her hand, and even then she quite often takes over an hour to go to sleep and gets upset or wakes up as soon as we leave the room. In the night she’s started waking up and staying awake for well over an hour, screaming no matter what we try to do. She’s feeding for much longer than she ever did before (around 15-20 minutes I’d say) and then wanting to hold my/DH’s hand for another 20 minutes at least.

None of us are getting the sleep we need, and DH and I are so tired that we’re starting to struggle to just get through the days. We both work long hours and it’s starting to affect work too.

We just don’t know what to do, we’re trying our hardest to cope but the lack of sleep is really starting to get on top of us. I just miss the days where our little girl slept (better), and can’t imagine at this point it’s even possible that a day will come where she’ll sleep through the night.

Sorry for the long post!

Do you think you could do this? www.drjaygordon.com/blog-detail/sleep-changing-patterns-in-the-family-bed

My experience with ds was that feeding to sleep just stopped working as well and started taking a long time after his first birthday.

I'd say night wean and set up a bed next to lo so you can hold her hand but fall asleep yourself at the same time.

Let me know if you want to discuss what it's like gently night weaning. Happy to share my experience of Jay Gordon's approach.

Sleep-train her. The Ferber method is good and it only takes a couple of days.
We left it until DD was nearly three before we did it, but after the first night (which was awful) the second night was markedly better, and the third night, she just slept through.

She does not remember anything about it, before a million people start telling me I scarred her for life.

Just wondering how you got on @LavenderAndLillies? Did sleep improve naturally? I have a 19m old who is similar with multiple wakes and been like it since birth. We've had 1 night in Feb where she did almost a full night no wakes but never been repeated again.

Looking for hope it'll get better by itself and to keep responding to her!

I second sleep training. I have an 18 month old who now sleeps 12 hours per night with no wakeups, and naps 2-3 hours at lunchtime. But believe me, it wasn't always like this. It took some exhaustion and a lot of hard work to get to this point. You will find your solution eventually, ours was sleep training although i know that isnt for everyone.

Good luck xx

Sleep training seems like the best option here as you said your working long hours you can't quit your job so your with your child more which may make her feel more comfortable at bedtime but also that can back fire too and make them clingy so either way you can't win. You need to work and you need rest too. Try and sleep train, she won't be scarred for life as some people suggest on forums.

Feeling your pain though OP

It got better almost immediately after I posted this thread! Well, she started letting us leave the room anyway. We gradually night weaned her (very gradually, it took months) and then we started sitting in a chair in her room whilst she fell asleep, eventually we got to a point where she’d fall asleep without our help - it took a while but because she was doing her own thing then we’d just take a book or something in to pass the time.

The problem we have now is that we had to take the side off her cot as she can climb out, and so now we’re faced with a toddler who runs around the room for hours, acting like it’s playtime, who won’t stay in bed no matter how hard we try 😬 I fear that bedtime is never going to be peaceful in our house!

Sorry, I meant to tag you @Kgordonhill90 ! Good luck with your little one 🤞