I'm guessing that there have been many similar messages like this before but here goes.
We've been having horrible bedtimes for the last few months which I've put down to a range of factors, teething, new brother, more language, needing to wee because she is potty trained, going away to visit relatives for several weeks over the summer and maybe beginning to not need a nap. She has not ever been a great sleeper but we've not really had problems at bed time before now, she speciallised in night wakings and early starts.
Today she had a nap from 2:15 till 3:45 and she still has not gone to sleep and it is 10pm, she has being mucking about and occasionally crying for more than 2h. I dread bedtimes now. Over the last weeks we've either had hours of intermittent screeming or a constant stream of attention seeking requests. We've been going in regularly and doing what she asks for and not talking of engaging with her. She goes to bed at 7:45pm and usually wakes after 7am. We have recently started to have occasional night wakings too ranging from straight back to sleep by herself to 2h of inconsolable screeming. We've tried music and night lights with slight success for a few nights but she is rarely asleep by 8:30pm.
She goes to daycare 2 days a week and she seems to have a nap for 1-1.5h at about 12:30pm. At home she is not usually tired enough to have a nap before about 1:30pm and it has been really hard to get her to nap in bed of late. I usually engineer it so that she falls asleep in her pushchair on the way back from something and sometimes this is as late as 3pm. She usually needs to be wakened and she'll easily sleep for more than 1.5h.
I've not given up on the nap because time and quality of nap does not seem to relate to ease of bedtime as far as I can tell. Plus she often looks really tired at about 1:30pm but I'm thinking of trying a week with no nap to see if we can make the bedtimes less of a traumatic experience.
