19 months - perfect sleeper to absolute nightmare!

[kriek2babes]

Hello! I am hoping someone can help - my husband and I are at our wit's end. Our daughter has been a perfect sleeper for the past year. We did a bit of sleep training, but she only took a few days to get her sleeping through the night and has (HAD) been a perfect sleeper ever since. About two weeks ago she started protesting nighttime sleep. But with a little patting she was fine. It has been getting progressively worse. She now stands and gets absolutely hysterical when I leave the room. I have tried controlled crying (albeit not entirely consistently), but things only seem to be getting worse. The past three nights she has also been waking at 2am and taking 2-3 hours (of more screaming) to get back down. In all cases she basically just exhausts herself until she can't fight the sleep.
As soon as I go in she settles, sucks her thumb and cuddles her bunny and drifts off, but the moment she hears my footsteps or the door, she is standing and screaming.

Will this pass? Should i just be indulging her and standing there with her indefinitely until she is in a deep sleep? I have the stomach for letting her cry it out if someone were to tell me that it won't just make things worse. I just don't want to leave her if she is dealing with some sort of separation anxiety.

Look forward to some guidance or success stories!

[Haribo2012]

Hi there, sounds tough for you. Here at BW we don't support crying it out or controlled crying as it breaks a child trust please read this Kara & Alexandra's Story

It could be that LO is suffering with separation anxiety and needs your help for a while to feel secure, any teeth moving about? A more gentle approach for dealing with sleep issues at this age is using walk in walk out or gradual withdrawal. Walk In/Walk Out vs. The Gradual Withdrawal Method (HOW TO CHOOSE)
If you post your day we can take a look to see if any tweaks might help?

[kriek2babes]

Thank you for your reply. After doing some reading on this site, I followed my gut and tried a much gentler approach last night. No crying (for either of us). I feel a bit sick about letting her cry so much for the past few nights. When I look back it is so clear to me that things were only getting worse, but I kept reading "it will get worse before it gets better" for the CIO methods.

Last night she was exhausted so went down very quickly while I stood beside the crib. When she woke at 2:20 screaming, I went in picked her up, rocked her and put her back down. I stood there leaning on her crib until 3:45. She settled and would drift off but would wake to see if I was still there. I felt I needed to re-build some trust after the last few nights so I just stayed. By 3:45 she was sound asleep and stayed asleep until 7:15.
Here is a typical day for us:

7am wake up
8:30 walk other daughter to school
9/9:30 Playgroup
10:30 snack
11:30 nap (usually 1.5 hours)
2:45 walk to school and play outside
5:00 dinner
5:45 bath
6:30 stories
7:00 bed

I will have a look at the other techniques you suggested. I am so glad I found this forum. What a great resource. Thank you for your help. Let me know if there is anything that should be tweaked in scheduling.

[Haribo2012]

I'm glad you find the reading helpful, it's so much more gentle on your LO if they know u will respond.

Your day looks pretty good, the only thing I'd prob try is pushing nap a bit later to get a more even A time, if you get a 2 hour nap I'd also make BT 30 mins later!
Separation anxiety and teeth play havoc at this age and also there is a sleep regression around 18 months so you could still be experiencing that x