7 year old still won’t sleep without me

[Theantisleepfairy]

I am worried that I am going to get roasted for this.

I have 2 children, 14 years apart. I have always been a single mum. With my eldest, she went into her own room at 6 months and was left to cry it out. She went to bed at 7.30 every night and woke around 7am. When she moved to a bed, if she got up in the night she went to the loo/got a drink/whatever and then went back to bed and back to sleep. She has a lot of mental health problems, attachment issues and eating disorders, and has done from being 11. With all the research about attachment parenting that had come out in the meantime I was desperate to avoid a repeat of this with my second child, as I felt that leaving her to cry it out had caused all her issues.

Dd2 had severe allergies and reflux. She would regularly choke and aspirate on her own vomit in the night, and so stayed in my room so that I could clear her airways. She was a terrible sleeper due to intestinal and skin issues (her skin used to peel off like PVA glue, so she could never get comfortable), and we ended up co-sleeping because I was just so exhausted. This went on until she was nearly 3. By this point we were firmly entrenched in the co-sleeping pit, with no clear way to climb out. This is also the same time that we were put onto the ASD pathway. We are still not diagnosed.

She is now 7. She still wakes every 90 minutes at night. It takes hours to get her off to sleep, and usually it is past 11pm before she finally drifts off. She is terrified of being left alone in her room, and if I do not lie next to her and hold her she will not stay still and settle down to go to sleep, and will get more and more worked up and hysterical until she is sick, and then will continue to be hysterical and sick in a vicious cycle. The second I try to leave the bed she wakes up instantly and the adrenaline from being scared that I’m leaving her wakes her up properly for hours. If I stay in the bed with her she wakes every 90 minutes until morning. I am at my wits end. Especially during the holidays there is no break-we wake up together, we spend the day together, we go to bed together, we wake multiple times in the night together, and I am just worn out. There is no time to be by myself, and the older she gets, the more challenging her behaviour is becoming, so the more I need a little bit of time to myself to recharge. I just don’t know what to do. Does anyone have any advice?

@Theantisleepfairy My only advice is to go to the GP and ask for melatonin. This made a big difference to my niece, who has a chromosomal condition and would wake repeatedly throughout the night until she was prescribed it at age 4. She's now 12 and still on it (and still co-sleeps with my sister!).

I would also stick with the co-sleeping for now- she's clearly not ready to sleep alone. I know it must be tough, but it's the lesser of two evils at the moment.

Thank you so much. The GP said that they couldn’t do anything as we are under paediatrics for an autism assessment, so we need to wait until we see them (current wait time is over 24 months!). I will ask paediatrics when we do see them though.