16mo will no longer settle in my arms, bed or crib

[mumofone221]

I have a 16mo daughter who I have rocked to sleep her whole life. I couldn’t bring myself to do sleep training or CIO so just carried on rocking as that seemed to be the quickest way to get her to sleep.

Except it has stopped working, and I can’t find any other gentle way to get her to sleep without her having a meltdown.

if I rock her or even hold her, she gets very distressed and tries everything to push herself out of my arms. If I lay her in our bed or in the crib she’ll scream, but that’s become my only option.

It feels like I’m doing CIO by doing this, when I really didn’t want to, but it seems there’s no other way to get her to sleep. Tonight she fell asleep sitting up after crying in her cot for over half an hour. She’s definitely tired.. and I try to stop her being overtired by starting her sleep routine at the right time.

Is there a trick I’m missing? Do some babies just hate going to sleep no matter what you do?

I would say this is just a phase. We are out the other side now.

I would put her down if she started screaming in my arms but very quickly pick her up back up then try distraction. I read the goal is to try to stop cortisol and adrenaline from spiking as this will make her less able to go to sleep. Some ideas that have worked sometimes here; stop focusing on sleep in that moment and start chatting to teddies, singing a song, reading a book in low light, walking to the window cuddling her and pointing at the stars etc. So basically taking the focus off sleep so she calms down completely then trying again with what you usually do.