a new thing......taking ages to fall to sleep

[hil217]

hello all

its been a while, but i just wanted to see if anyone had any pearls of wisdom, which have always been so helpful in the past.

my little man is 22months, generally speaking i consider him  to be a good sleeper, we have had some minor issues along the way, periods of early waking, night waking, but it always seems to be linked to illness or transition to one nap, bit have worked through them ( thanks to you guys as well!)

We have had very few issues the last six or so months, but the last week, for some reason he is taking up to an hour to settle to sleep.  It starts off with just chatting to himself ( or his bear) then he starts kicking the head of the cot or the cot bars.  its about 50/50 whether it end in crying which i have to go in to him to settle him.  It sounds like a heard of elephants trampling through his room some nights!!  Before this, he would settle straight away without a peep.

I am thinking is it his wind down time, but this has been the same for the last 6 months  without much problem- bath / cream/ milk/10mins of In the Night Garden/sleep cuddles from mommy.  Books never worked unfortunately, they seemed to just get thrown around!   

Or I'm thinking is it time to try a big bed, although this is something that we will just have to do, no easy transition as we  have a cot bed  which will have to be dismantled.  This week at nursery for the first time he has used a bed to sleep in rather than a cot as he has moved to the toddler group.  They commented that he settled better in the bed, chatting and kicking his cot and standing up, had been an issue at nursery previously but not at home, more so because he was too busy looking at the other babies being settled to sleep!

my little mans current days looks  approx like this

7.30-8 wakes

12.30 - lunch

1pm - nap

2.30pm - awake

5pm - tea time

6.45 - bath / milk/ night garden / cuddles

7.30pm bed

any thoughts are welcome,

 thanks H x x 

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Just marking this one...he could be my girl's twin, they have  the same routine (right down to In the Night Garden!!!) and she has started taking ages to fall asleep (we do have a new baby, but this all started months before the birth)

[anyamom]

marking too.. strange things are happening to sleeptime here as well..

[amywiz24]

hhhmmm
your comemnts about the bed vs cot at nursery make me think perhaps he is ready for the transiotion.
However, I wouldn't normally recommend making a change when there are "sleep problems".
Sorry, not very helpful.
I will say, that my DS went through a similar stage at that age. It seems to be fairly common. Perhaps they have more complex lives now to "unwind from". Moving the bed time back 30-60 min later did help, but we still go through periods where he may take up to an hour to fall asleep, almost never crying though.

[debandbrian]

I am thinking that the sleep problems might just be tied to the change to the toddler group and/or the move to the bed there. Maybe that's just been enough to throw him off?

We were having the exact same problem about 6 mos ago, but unfortunately it was because we were dropping the daytime nap (at 3+ yrs... I think your lo is probably not ready for that). If it were me, I'd try bumping the nap up  by a bit to give more awake time - if you can't do that on nursery days, then why not just try the weekend to see if it helps?  Or I may just take the plunge and go from the cot to the bed - at least to be consistent with the nursery...

Good luck -
Deb

[irish3680]

Ella went through a phase a few months ago where she was taking an hour or sometimes more to fall asleep. For us, part of the problem was her nap was too long (about 2.5 hours) so we cut the nap to 2 hours. Even that didn't help so I just put her to bed a little earlier to accommodate her own personal winddown time. She would also kick the crib, which sounded like someone was banging on our front door  This lasted a few weeks and now she is back to normal, which for her is about 30 minutes quietly to fall asleep.