18 month old fighting sleep

[MommyToAbby]

DD will be 18 months in one week. For the past two months we have had many nights where it takes her two hours to fall asleep for bed.  She has occasionally skipped her mid-day nap due to the same issue.

She goes into her crib at 7:30pm. The last two nights, she was fussing by 8pm, so we go back in to find a poopy diaper. We change it and then sooothe her back to a sleepy state and usually leave her room the second time by 8:30pm. She'll spend the next 90 minutes rolling around, babbling to her lovey, playing with her feet, practicing counting (two, two, eee, two, two, TWO!), singing abc's (aaaaa, bay, gee, eeee!), and playing music on her aquarium until 10pm. She finally falls asleep at 10pm, wakes up at 6:30am or so, gives sleepy signs by 9am, is exhausted and grumpy by 11am. Goes down for a nap at 12pm and sleeps until 2:30pm. By 5:30pm, she is yawning and rubbing her eyes and asking for a bath.

She can fall asleep by herself but she fights it happily playing by herself in her crib. She is not getting enough sleep at night it seems.  HELP!!

Barb

[jess, lukeys_mom]

Hi Barb,

I can't exactly share in your experiences, but we did also go through some rather strange patches with sleep when ds was just about 18 months old. For us it lasted about 6 weeks and there were some friends from his day care going through odd things at the time too so I wonder if it has to do with the developmental stages they're going through at this age.

I can't help but thinking now though that if your lo is going to sleep at around 10, that she needs to have an earlier bedtime for the time being. Her days are then really long, and my guess would be that when she is really tired at the end of the afternoon but then doesn't go into bed till 7.30, she gets wired. Could that be the case?

If I were you I would try giving her a super early bedtime (6-6.30) for a bit to try and catch her up on some night sleep. When she is exhausted at 11, put her down then for now. After a few days when you think she is not as OT, then you can push up her nap in small bits to lengthen.
Another thing you could try is for a short time giving her an extra catnap in the am and doing her regular nap in the pm. So say putting her down at 9/9.30 for 30 minutes, and then again for a bigger nap at around 1.

HTH x