21 month old uncontrollable anything sleep related

[Amr92]

I am absolutely desperate.

my 21 month old slept through the night from 5 weeks old until just after his 1st birthday. We presumed it was the usual sleep regressions / teething that was causing disruptive nights but for nearly a year now bed time and nights have become unbearable.

we have contacted the health visitors twice now for advice and followed everything they have said: dropped the milk, dropped the dummy, same bed time routine every night, the environment, no screen time after 2pm, eat meals together as a family. Absolutely everything they have said we have stuck to. I’ve even taken him to the drs to just be told “see how you get on”

it is getting worse and worse as the nights go on.

Our current situation is:
our son now screams and fights to even go upstairs.
we have to battle to get him in the bath with most nights his tantrums become so bad we don’t make it into the bathroom.
the second we try and take him to bed he screams and tries to fight his way back downstairs. It can take anything from 40mins - 2 hours to get him to settled. And what is breaking my heart even more he will only settle for his dad and not me his mom. When he finally is asleep he is having between 2-4 night time wakes a night…. Sometimes he settled back after 5-10 mins (usually only for his dad) if we are lying next to the cot, however sometimes it can go on for over an hour!

it’s now becoming that day time naps are the same challenge.

we have tried different rooms to sleep in, co sleeping, sleeping in his room next to the cot, we’ve tried letting him cry for a little bit, we’ve tried him out the cot in his room, we’ve tried the pick up put down method the disappearing chair!!!

please can anyone help me I am desperate. Where are we going so wrong?!

Yeah I think we were so desperate so called the health visitors and because they advised all these things I got fixed in my head “we have to follow exactly what they say to make it work” which it clearly isn’t!
we do play upstairs too but not a great amount all his toys are down stairs apart from bath toys and books really.

I will try this too and do more playing upstairs and going with the flow more with bath time. Thank you!

He has always had a Winnie the Pooh comforter since he was a baby that we’ve always included in bed time and naps and holidays etc and he did go through a stage of really cuddling it at night. Now anything we try to give for comfort like his Winnie the Pooh’s just throws at us and shouts NO

I'm just thinking of the routine and challenge of getting to bed, how is he with transitions in general? We struggled when our DD was that age with fighting us to go upstairs for bedtime. Lots of visual cues, countdowns, reminders etc helped. Sorry if I'm teaching grandma to suck eggs here x

I thought at one point he was having night terrors in the night because he went through a stage of screaming uncontrollably for 1-2 hours and nothing you could do could comfort him sometimes it’s like he didn’t acknowledge we were there but those sort of nights have seemed to stop since we dropped the dummy. I really don’t know when I search about night terrors some nights I feel that’s what could be happening. We haven’t tried staying downstairs but I’m willing to try anything!

i did worry about pain too and took him to the drs but the response I got was “see how you get on”

we had tried to rule out pain before thinking teething was contributing but pain relief like calpol or nurofen didn’t really make any difference. He opens his bowels daily and the dr didn’t seem even respond or taken interest when I said could it be an allergy!

I haven’t followed his lead yet but I’m willing to try it, we’ve had the odd night where he’s gone down to sleep then woke up after a few hours and after hours of trying to settle him back to sleep we’ve taken him back downstairs and he’s ended up playing till midnight then having a milk and going back to bed but that’s rare as we’ve been trying so hard to stick to health visitors advice!

i agree though for what they advise it seems to way too much for such little babies and I’ve felt cruel trying to force a routine on him at times. But then on the flip side I know so many mom friends who swear by the routine consistency and it works so brilliantly for them.

every child is different I just wish it could find what’s right for him at the moment so much just isn’t working!

I am very reluctant to give the dummy back now though because it was a rough week when we took it away and he never mentions or asks for it now, we did also see an improvement (not solved but better than it was) once it had gone…. Even his speech improved and he started talking more. I feel to give it back after all that to then at some point take it away again would be a bit pointless.

Don’t apologise I really appreciate any tips guidance advice anyone has to give!

parenting is a hard and a massive learning curve I am willing to give anything a try!

I personally would drop the routine.

Don't worry about the bath before bed just give a bath throughout the day whenever suits you all.

Read a book downstairs, give them some milk, then tell them we are getting ready for bed soon. Sit and talk with them. If they don't seem ready yet, wait a little change the subject, ask them to do something with you, tidy up or help you with something

Do they walk up the stairs themselves?
If so say come upstairs and help mummy with something, go to their room, talk about random things. For me I ask my toddler to look out the window to see if we can see the moon tonight or any aeroplanes etc

Ask them to help you arrange their teddy's in the bed if they use them, ask them to chose a book.

I then read book with my child then we talk about our day, I then explain I have to go do the dishwasher or tidy up or whatever else I need to do, and I tell them il come back and check on them soon.

I've been doing this for a long time and he is nearly 2.5 years. He goes to bed happily and always does, if I say let's go see if we can see the moon tonight he will say come on then mummy.
Of course he does stall sometimes and tells me one more minute mummy. I normally say ok and get on with something else..if he keeps stalling I tell him, if you don't come and get ready I'm going to carry you up the stairs and that normally gets him to get ready as he is very independent about going up and down the stairs!

Sorry for the long reply. Hope this makes sense :)

My experience with health visitors is they only give out very generic and often out dated advice. You know your child best, worth trying some different things. Honestly I think they advise “routine” as they don’t know what else to say!! It’s als a very western concept to have a bedtime and routine. My brother lives in Kenya and he said the idea of imposing a bedtime on a kid is just unheard of there: they just wait til their kids are literally dropping off then put them in bed.

I know this a month old, I've only just stumbled across your post so apologies. Hopefully you're on the road to improvement now but just in case you're not I wanted to +1 the suggestions of a little craziness before bed.

I have a 3 year old who is allowed a little screentime after nursery whilst we deal with his baby brother. We turn the TV off and then tell him it's bedtime, but it isn't really as we then spend a good 40 mins running around playing chase, hide and seek... even tickle fights before we tackle going up the stairs. (We've built in this running around time so he thinks he's winning at delaying bedtime). He then gets his teeth brushed and PJs on, then into his bed for stories and songs. We allow a good hour of putting him to bed before he is actually in bed and he goes right off after. I never believed it until I had one myself but some children do just need to be crazy before they'll sleep. He once genuinely bounced down the hall as a frog and 10 mins later he was asleep!