On our knees with 2yo sleep.

[maureenponderosa]

Thought I had sleep cracked with DC1. Wasn't an easy journey but he's been a good sleeper since he was 1. Turns out it was just luck and not the skill of the routine...
DC2 has never been a good sleeper. The bad has been varied - from multiple wake ups to sleep refusal, so at least it's not bad AND boring...

We're currently into our fourth week of wake ups between 4 and 5am. We need help. I'm not sure whether to call the GP, or the HV, or pay out for a sleep consultant.

She's obviously over-tired because her bad moods are terrible. She throws things, hits my husband, and just screams and screams at the top of her lungs. Often for no reason. This morning, I gently asked her not to touch my face as my acne has become very bad (probably stress and lack of sleep), and she had a 10 minute melt down about that.

Related information:
She is still breastfeeding. I don't BF her in the night. It's just morning and before bed.
She's not fed to sleep. She settles herself to sleep when we put her down.
Bedtime is at 7:30. Routine is bath, pjs, milk, story, song and a cuddle.
She hardly eats anything. She never seems hungry. She does eat fruit, veg, and yoghurt, but hardly anything filling.
She hardly drinks any water despite being offered all day. Her urine isn't too strong.
She does a 2 hour nap when she's at home at the weekends. She will do a 45 minute nap at kindergarten. Sometimes she has no nap. The naps don't seem to have any impact on her night sleep.
Her room is completely black out.

We have tried:
Co sleeping
Sleeping in a cot
Sleeping in a floor bed
Bringing bedtime earlier
Doing bedtime later
Doing an evening walk to tire her out
Offering wheetabix before bed
Giving a banana before bed
Giving a spoon of butter before bed (apparently fat is slow release. This just made her determined to climb the counter and steal butter all the time)
Offering water and leaving water in her room
Gro Clock
No eye-contact resettles

It's not fair on my son. He has school and feels tired all the time from being disturbed. He's certainly not getting the best of us anymore as DD2 is so ill-tempered and demanding, and we're running on fumes.

I'm almost at the point of moving my son into the bedroom furthest away from hers, putting her in the cot, putting ear plugs in and just leaving her to it until 6:30am. I just can't go on like this. I feel like I'm going to die. Or be fired from my job.

Does anyone have any advice?

Bumping as I'm desperate!

I think the first thing to do might be to accept that this might not be something you're getting wrong, neither might it be something with a fix. They're all different, she's not doing it on purpose, or to you, she doesn't have a choice, it's how she is. I had a chronically bad sleeper and I totally hear you, it nearly sent me round the twist.

What helped was not books, or advice, but just accepting that it would not be like this forever and doing whatever got the most people the post sleep, whatever that looked like. For me it was a double mattress on the floor, and slowly over the years it did improve, but at 2 you're in the long grass, until she can develop a bit more awareness of others and empathy, she's not there yet and that's normal.

If you want professional support that's not brutal or Victorian Fern Bishop could be worth contacting.

"She hardly eats anything. She never seems hungry. "

what is her typical daily food intake / what do meals look like?

Does she sleep from 7:30-5 or does she wake up in the night too?

How much daily exercise is she getting?

Sounds tough! Is she sleeping through 7.20-4/5 or is she waking up in the night as well?

I wonder if she might be cold - 4 or 5am tends to be the coldest part of the night, so so maybe that's waking her. Is she indicating any issues when she wakes up early e.g. that she is hungry, thirsty or in pain?

Also if you try a schedule change e.g. later bedtime, you would have to stick with it for up to 2 weeks to see if it makes an impact not just a few days or even a week.

You could try pushing bedtime back a bit later still. My 2 YO goes to bed at 8:00, sometimes a little after. Wakes between 5:30 on a bad morning and 6:30/7:00. We don't let her sleep past three, if she has a long nap we push her bedtime a little more so she's got a little more sleep pressure to see her through to a decent time in the morning.
Also, she might have a food intolerance - we had horrid sleep until we worked out she couldn't handle dairy.

The first thing I'd look at is 'the most sleep for the most people'. Work out a schedule between you and DH who is on call for the early wake (and any night wakes). DS and whichever adult is off duty should temporarily sleep in the furthest bedroom or wherever is going to be quietest – everyone needs to catch up on sleep. Once the adults are topped up a bit, you and DH might be fine in your normal room at least most nights, if the other person can get up with DD quickly and quietly.

Is there a chance DD is naturally low sleep needs? That can lead to lots of sleep problems if we're trying to get them to sleep more in 24 hours than they need – they just genuinely aren't tired enough. And then you get in a nasty trap that they are overtired because the sleep was broken or they woke up too early or went to bed too late...but their sleep needs still don't match their schedule, so the problem keeps going. Both my DDs are low sleep needs, and at 2, that meant 10 hours overnight and a 1 hour nap (and the nap went the way of the dodo by about 2.5, with overnight sleep creeping up to about 10.5 hours).

If she's trying to eat butter, I wonder if she is craving fat and calories, even if she doesn't 'feel hungry'. What happens if you let her fill her boots with full-fat greek yoghurt, generously buttered crackers/oatcakes, toast with whatever cheese, peanut butter, hummus, etc. she likes?

Yes, in your situation I would be speaking with the gp or health visitor. You have listed issues with sleep, eating and emotional regulation, which could indicate additional needs. I don't think you can assume that the rages are sleep related.

For now, I agree with pp that sleep maximising is the priority. One adult can be up with her every morning and take her as far away from your son as possible, so his sleep isn't disrupted. Get used to some early nights when it is your turn to be up early. In case it gives you hope, this was my life with ds1. He still needs less sleep than other kids his age, but finally slept through the night at 2.5 and isn't usually up before 6:30/7 now.

@HarryVanderspeigle "Yes, in your situation I would be speaking with the gp or health visitor. You have listed issues with sleep, eating and emotional regulation, which could indicate additional needs."

This is interesting. She was flagged at her 1 year check for very pronounced ASD indicators. We were referred to paeds, specialist play and S&L.

While we waited, I did 2 months of targeted S&L intervention sessions with her (I'm a former primary teacher and luckily had the experience to do this, as specialist play support didn't arrive for a year).

She's made such incredible progress with her speech (full conversations before 2) and relationships (also, she's starting to recognise sounds in books, knows about 10 phonemes and I've not taught her this).

She's 26 months now and the additional needs thing had gone out of my head, but you're right, it's something we should keep an eye out for, and perhaps she just has lower sleep needs.

@GoldDuster "They're all different, she's not doing it on purpose, or to you, she doesn't have a choice, it's how she is."

This is so helpful and what I needed to hear. Thank you. She does actually have a double floor bed so I could co sleep with her, but it turned out that she is less likely to settle with me in there than if I'm not. She just starts trying to pry my eyelids open and sit on my head while laughing maniacally.

But a mental reset for my husband and me is the first step to approaching this healthily. We need to ask ourselves, 'How can we help her?', not 'How can we stop her?'

Thank you

Breakfast (this morning)
Eggy bread 1 round. (1/8 eaten)
3 strawberries
One fork of my scrambled eggs
One tiny chocolate egg that she stole and ate in secret (left over from an Easter Egg hunt)
Water (one sip)

Lunch (yesterday)
Dried mango
Sultanas
Brown pasta with butter (not eaten)
Grapes (not eaten)
Shredded chicken sandwich best of both bread (not eaten)
Yoghurt (half eaten)
Water (one sip)

Snack
Pink lady apple (half eaten)

Dinner (last night)
Roast chicken and lemon and saffron rice one pot (three mouthfuls of chicken. No rice)
Carrots and broccoli, buttered (she usually eats all of this but recently has lost interest in all dinner)
Another yoghurt
Refused water

Pre-bed carb snack given in desperation to fill her
Cheerios with milk (5 spoons)

We grow our own veg and try our best to avoid UPF, but she's OBSESSED with crisps. She asks for them all the time although we hardly ever keep them in the house. Sometimes she will scream for 5 minutes in her desperation for crisps.

Writing it all down, it seems so little. I need to weigh and measure her to see where she is on her chart. Her feet seem to grow quite slowly, so maybe she's growing slowly in general as a result of her diet.

She is usually asleep by 8pm. Every other night she wakes in the night. My husband usually settles her as if I go in, she gets really distressed when I leave her.

Can you put a stair gate on her room and child proof it?

The issue isn't so much her waking up as waking everyone else up.

If she wants to be awake, she can be but until her gro clock is the right colour, she stays in her room.

You can go to her, give her a cuddle and explain what will be happening 'its too early to be up, you stay here until...."

I do agree with the trying to maximise your own sleep though. Can one of you go to bed early and one get up early?

She's obviously not going to adapt to staying in her room immediately so the person going to bed early and getting up early can stretch it 10 minutes per day.

Is there some sort of little reward she can get for staying in bed for 10 minutes, then 15 minutes etc.

Quite a lot. We do an evening walk most nights after dinner. We spend a lot of time in the garden. She's very very active. Her kindergarten always comments on how much "energy" she has. I'm envious. I wish I had a bit of energy.

I did wonder about the temperature as she is on the north side of the house. We bought her a thick tog sleep suit. It didn't make a difference but maybe we should try again now the heating is off and she's back in a cot, and put an oil filled rad in there for her. I'll give this a try, thank you.

@maureenponderosa just to add that hyperlexia is also very commonly linked with autism. How wonderful that she is so interested in reading already. Have you had the 2 year check yet? I know the actual time it takes place can vary.

We did push it back to 8 but as it didn't make a difference, we reverted to 7:30 for 'in bed' so our son could have a bit of quality time where our focus is properly on him.
The food intolerance thing is interesting. Were there any other signs of intolerance that you saw? My son had/has a severe dairy and sesame allergy, but as his symptoms were all dramatic and dermatological, I hadn't considered intolerances for DD2.

@skkyelark
Organising better team work is a good idea. My husband does do more early wake ups than me. Probably 75% of them with me taking over at 6:30. I know it's not fair and I feel really guilty.

RE low sleep needs, I wonder whether to try and reduce her nap duration. Did you have to wake yours from naps to make sure they didn't sleep more than an hour?

@FiveBarGate I think we could try this. We currently don't have toys in her room but making her room more of a fun place to be is a good shout.

And you're right. We need to go to bed earlier. We're usually not asleep until late at the moment, as we're busy with dinner and kids until 8:30, and resetting the house/doing a few jobs for over an hour. And while it's hard to admit, I rot in bed for an hour on Mumsnet or Tiktok. The last habit needs to go, but when I'm exhausted from working and serving the house all day, I just want to turn my brain off and be mindless. I know it doesn't help though.

We haven't had a 2 year check. I forgot we were meant to have one. I'll call the HV and ask if we can be seen sooner rather than later.

That's interesting RE hyperlexia. Autism is quite prevalent in my family.

My number one priority is that she is happy and getting what she needs. Her being too tired, having meltdowns all the time and not eating enough really make me worry about her.
My number two priority is that we get enough sleep so that we are the best parents we an be.

Accepting there are some things we cannot change, and refocusing on 'most sleep for most people' is really good advice.

Stop breastfeeding

If she hits you on the face, get down to her level, hold her shoulders, look into her eyes and say loudly 'you do not hit me!!'

Are the kids in the same room??

At her age, I'd drop the nap. Or at the very least cut it down drastically. A 2hr nap is a lot of day sleep for some kids. We started capping the naps and the night time sleep sorted itself out.

What ridiculous advice. What would stopping breastfeeding achieve?