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?