Cries to sleep with grandparents, cuddles with us

[MrsTeepee]

Hi all,

I'm at a bit of a loss what to do with our 2 year old. She's never been a brilliant sleeper, and always needs to be cuddled to sleep before being put in her cot.

We're working on not picking her up for wake ups at night (I'm pregnant and can no longer lift her, also having a c section soon) so DH does bedtime and I do night wakes. She's happy to go back to sleep in the cot just holding my hand now. DH is still working out how to reduce the cuddles (although I think he actually enjoys it!). Feels like we're going in the right direction and hopefully my hand can get swapped out for DHs before long.

At nursery she curls up and goes to sleep on her designated mattress with her blanket, has always slept well there with v.little support needed once she'd settled in.

My mum cuddles her to sleep, as did our recent babysitter. Babysitter said there were a few tears, but she eventually settled down with a book and dropped off. We had another baby sitter previously who also cuddled her to sleep with no issues. Both babysitters are people from her nursery that we trust to tell us the truth.

The main problem is that grandparents simply cannot do anything other than let her cry herself to sleep. They had DD when she was about 6mo in preparation for me going back to work and tbh it was horrendous. She barely ate or slept with them and I'd therefore be up all night feeding her every 45-60 minutes as she was too tired to even eat or feed properly. We stopped them doing childcare as soon as we could after trying so many things to help them. They now see DD for 3-4 hours at a time, after her nap, but they want to see her more, and we would love that too (for her benefit and ours). A recent attempt at bedtime resulted in DD hyperventilating she was so upset, and a recent nap time that was in theory a success basically meant she cried herself to sleep. We've previously suggested car naps so they can have her in the day, but they have made excuses about not wanting to be stuck in the car and prefer to let her scream herself to sleep. They also don't have a cot at theirs, although did recently buy a travel cot for SILs child so could now use that.

We persevered when she was younger thinking it'd get better, but it didn't. Grandparents kept insisting that it's just normal for her to cry herself to sleep, despite us saying it's not her normal. I just don't know whether to just give up earlier this time and stick to short durations with Grandparents, or if this time it will be different because she's older.

I also just wish I could work out what's going on. Part of me thinks she's traumatized from them trying to get her to sleep when she was a baby, but that seems a bit dramatic?!

Any tips?

I got a double bed for my grandchildren. At bedtime we both climb in, read stories, I put something on my tablet sometimes and they drift off. The bedroom is downstairs just along from the sitting room, perhaps that makes a difference.

This sounds like wishful thinking by your DH as well as him wanting to please his parents. They can’t cope with her and she screams when they try to cuddle her.
You have as much right as he does to decide who looks after your children. If one of you (you, her mother) don’t want any particular person or people looking after her for extended periods, that should be the end of it - you use your veto.

He’s keen for them to support you, but this is the wrong way of doing it. It isn’t support if you don’t like it and your child doesn’t like it.

There’s a backstory isn’t there? Have you posted about them before? I remember another post about ILs “insisting” on having their GC and a nursery place being lost.
They can’t insist. The parents decide who looks after a child. YOU are the one who can insist things.