2 year old suddenly awake all night

[Sillymummies123]

Please help. She has been an independent all night sleeper until this week. Suddenly up repeatedly in night but worse the last two nights since she's started climbing out of cot. We have been calmly returning her to bed but she has literally been doing this since 3am today. I have started counting and we've done it 35 times since I started counting. I'm not happy for her to sleep in our bed. What the f can I do?!?! I work full time as does my partner. Dying here.

Following with interest. My 2.5 yo is doing the same (previously independent all night sleeper and equally I don't want to co-sleep!). Solidarity OP

Snap. Mine started when she was cutting her back molars. Solidarity- it's so awful when they stop sleeping!

Maybe she is going to bed too early? Maybe if you put her to sleep a couple of hours later she will sleep a couple of hours later in the morning?

Thanks for solidarity all! She's also refusing to engage with a nap, so I feel that a later bedtime might make things worse. Probably needs an earlier one but she's currently so resistant to sleep that she would just start the process of getting out of bed and I don't want extra time to reinforce that.

I’ve heard of people putting a child gate on the door and using that as her new boundary. When they’re so little and they realise the cot boundary is not as solid as they thought I think it freaks them out a bit, might explain the repeated boundary testing. And yeah solidarity, mine was up at 4 this morning after weeks of good sleep, you forget how awful it is.

Or anyway to prevent her climbing out? Sleeping bag?

I'd try getting her more exercise possibly.

DD dropped her nap at 23m much to my horror! And from around this time I clocked that she needed a lot of exercise and fresh air if I wanted a peaceful life at bedtime and over night. Tons of opportunities to run about safely and lots of clambering etc. made a big difference to her.

She's 6 now and is still the same. If she doesn't get much exercise she'll still be struggling to get to sleep at 10pm.

I'm afraid to sat we closed her door, but continued to go in and return her to bed and sooth her every 5-10 minutes.

After some initial period of being fairly shocked, she went off to sleep and only woke once for comfort and to be tucked in.

My 3.5 yo did this after we visited MIL and she told DD she could come visit her in the night if she got scared (DD literally never been scared in her life at night... but obviously did loads with MIL) and we ended up having to hold the door closed until she fell asleep on the floor. She stayed in bed after that. We tried the no engagement walk back to bed thing for 6 weeks with no progress apart from the whole family getting exhausted and ratty. Finally said if you leave your room during sleeping time, we will have to hold the door closed... she cried for 20 minutes, which obviously was terrible to listen to, fell asleep on the floor holding a tissue box and the issue went away. The crying was unpleasant, but it was undoubtedly better than the whole family being miserable for weeks.

Has anything changed OP? My 2.5 is suddenly waking 4-5 times a night! Do you have any tips?