29 month old - Bedtime nightmare!

[caro558]

Hi There
My DD is 29 months and about a month ago she climbed out of her cot twice in one night. So being the "rusher" that I am, I instructed my DH to convert her cotbed into a bed.
So, the 1st night she was fantastic it took me about 20 minutes to get her to sleep, she woke once in the night and that was it!
However, things have deteriorated so much now that it is taking us 2-2 half hours to get her to settle and stay in her bed.
We've cut her afternoon nap from 2 hours to 1 hour, we've tried PD method for hours and hours on end, we've tried not to get too cross, but inevitably we've ended up shouting.
She has also started pooing and taking her nappy off and playing with the poo. This is hard to deal with when it's smeared everywhere.
Last night it took 2 hours to settle her and I ended up laying on her bed with her, this meant my DH and I ended up having dinner at 10pm, she then woke at 12.50am, we tried taking her back to bed for about an hour, but she just screams and will not stay in bed.
 Eventually at 2am DH bought her into our bed where she stayed until 4am when she woke and woke us too. (Did I mention I also have a 12week old son sleeping next to us in our room?!) I took her back to her room where she screamed for 5 minutes then climbed into bed and went to sleep!
We're getting really worn down by this, can anyone offer us some advice on any of this ?
I'm guessing that the birth of our son has probably also affected her, however she was sleeping ok in her cot after he was born.
Do we put her back in her cot ?
We are also moving house at the end of August so I really need this sorted by then.

Any advice would be great!

Thank you
Caroline x

[linfran]

Our son is exactly the same age and we're having problems with bedtime too.  He did the nappy trick as well but we started putting a onesie vest on under his pyjamas, it makes the tabs of the nappy a bit harder to reach.

He has gone from being a great independent sleeper to refusing to settle at night and his nap had been cut to 45 mins.  Some days he doesn't nap at all and then he's easier to get to bed, but days when he naps he is going to bed up to 2 hours after his usual bedtime and then still gets up out of bed.  We have a stairgate across the bedroom door so at least he can't wander round the house at night.  I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to try and cut the nap right out as the problem is worse if he's slept during the day.

If he gets up I lead him back to bed and tuck him in and keep doing this so hopefully he gets the idea that that's where he's meant to be.  Personally I haven't tried taking him into our bed, I don't want him to get too comfortable there and want to sleep with us every night!!!!!!

Huge hugs, I wish I could find a solution too.