To set the scene- my 3.5 Yr old little girl has always needed lots of input at bedtime and has never gone to sleep on her own, we never sleep trained her and I breastfed her before bed and overnight untill she was 2 which worked for us and she began sleeping through the night with no issues around 2.5 although we still need to lie with her to go to sleep at bedtime. If we try and leave early she is super distressed, crying, screaming etc - which wakes my 1 Yr old up. We've tried talking about it in the day, using the chair gradual withdrawal etc but she screams at the top of her lungs and that doesn't work for us as a family as my son is currently also in the midst of some sort of regression and waking hourly
Bedtime aside - my daughter has suddenly began waking at 4.30 and coming into our room wanting me to play. I've tried everything to encourage her to stay in her room but she absolutely won't. She is bathed, in her pjs, bedtime routine done by usually 7.15pm and has 3 stories then lights out, although she sometimes doesn't go to sleep till nearly 8.30 -9 even after lights out. She doesn't have a nap anymore and hasn't for about 4 months. She's started falling asleep in the car now as she's so tired from these 4.30 wakes. I've tried taking her back to her room and putting on a audio story book and giving her a cuddle to go back to sleep but it doesn't work. The only other thing of note is she was very attached to her Dummy (only had it at night) and gave it up reluctantly a few weeks ago
My son wakes up every hour or so all night and then is now being woken up at 4.30. I've just gone back to work as a mental health nurse and can't cope with such disturbed sleep, I honestly don't know what to do.
Please can someone advise me about these early wakes?? We were gently sleep training my son by night weaning which was going well but he's teething/ has a cold atm so we paused but it's definitely something we are going to consider
Help!!