Help!!!!! 17 month old still needs cuddling to sleep :(

[Jemimap]

Hi everyone

I hope someone can help me with putting a plan together to get my daughter's bedtime to be quicker & easier.

Some background.

She is 17months old (just) and always fell asleep breastfeeding, once i stopped breasfeeding at 10 months she fell asleep while having or very shortly after having her bottle. We would then put her in her cot.

I knew this wasn't ideal to say the least but it never took more than 20 minutes so wasnt really an issue.

Over the last 2 months or so she has stopped falling asleep so easily and it now takes anything from 40 minutes to 2 hours to get her to sleep She seems to literally fight it, kicking her legs and shifting around to stay awake.

I am 20 weeks pregnant with LO #2 and need to be able to put her in her cot at bedtime and leave her to fall asleep. How do i get to this point?

For the last 2 weeks i have been waiting until she is at the very brink of sleep and then laying her in her cot, she then falls asleep in there ok however getting to that point can still be a 2 hour job. If i lay her down in her cot any earlier than being on the very edge of awake/sleep she wakes up completely and starts standing up/ shouting mummy/crying kicking the cot/ fidgeting and anything else she can to prevent falling asleep.

I don't want to leave her to cry herself to sleep but i don't want her to be dependent on me for sleep when i may not be able to cuddle her if i am seeing to the new baby.

Apologies for the long first post and thanks if you got this far!

Any advice on how to get to the point where she can go down into her cot awake and fall asleep on her own??

Thank you xxx

[Bex09]

Hi hun, welcome to the boards. I have just done sleep training with my DD (for the second time!) and I can now put her down awake and walk out and she will fall asleep herself. So it can be done. So glad that you don't want to put your DD through CIO, there are much gentler ways.

The fact that your DD is taking so long to fall asleep when you haven't changed anything yet would say to me that there is something else going on. Can you post your EASY routine so that we can have a look and see if anything jumps out? When we get BT refusal it is down to teething or LO being UT. Does your DD seem to be in pain or is she crying when you are holding her to sleep?

As for sleep training you really have two options. Here is a link that explains them both and helps you to choose which will be best. http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=80750.0
I take it that your DD has never fallen asleep on her own? If not then I think GW would be your best bet, this is what I have just done, so I can let you know what I did and see if that helps at all.

Post your routine and have a read of the link. Let me know what you think and we can come up with a plan if you like?

[Jemimap]

Thanks Bex

I'm sorry but we don't have an EASY routine, I wish we did! I didn’t 'discover' easy until my DD was 10 months or so and we didn't feel we had any issues. #2 will be an easy baby from the start though!! lol

I am back at work fulltime so she is with a childminder mon - fri. I have just had 2 weeks leave though and our day followed this structure, this is also how our weekends are:

6.30am Wake & bottle
7.00 - 7.20 am Brush teeth then play downstairs while I feed the dog and make coffee!
7.25 ish breakfast
7.30 -10.00 play both independently while I do housework etc and together
10ish toast/snack
11am - 12.30/1pm Nap (she dropped to 1 nap a day herself, we have never had an issue with her going to sleep for her naps either!
1/1.30 Lunch
After lunch we go out for a few hours, visiting relatives/ friends or to the park etc she also snacks during the afternoon.
5pm Tea
5.30 -6.30 family time where the 3 of us spend time playing together
6.30 no nappy time  - we go upstairs and she has time without her nappy while her bath is run and we read or play
7pm bath
7.15 dry /dressed and bottle
7.30 the BT battle begins!!!

She doesn't seem to be in pain or even unsettled she will happily lay and have me hold her for the time it takes her to fall asleep. She often plays with my hair while she winds down and once wound down either falls asleep and I can put her in her cot or begins to fidget in an effort to stay awake.

I've had a read of the link and while she appears to be a textbook toddler I think walk in / walk out may be distressing for her? I think GW seems best and would love to hear how you broke it down and what worked for you.

Also its worth saying that when with her childminder her routine is very similar but she never sleeps for as long there due to noise! However I've not been able to see a pattern between her BT and when she's been at the childminder or not.

Thanks so much for taking the time to help, I really appreciate it.
xx

[Bex09]

No problems hun I will help all that I can. How long has your DD had this routine and how long have you been having issues with her falling asleep? The main thing that jumps out is that she has a long A time until BT, this could be causing her to be OT and that can cause BT refusal too. It might be worth pushing her morning A time out a little, so say 15 minutes at a time every few days until it is 5 hours or more. Then your day would look more like this...

wu- 6.30
A time- 5.5h
nap- 12.00-2.00
A time- 5.5h
BT- 7.30

Do you think DD would cope with 5.5h A time in the morning? Your day is more balanced then in terms of A times, does that make sense? Does your DD usually do an 11h night and does she STTN? Can she resettle herself if she wakes in the night or during her nap?

I agree that GW would be best for you and DD. So what I did was carried out our wind down as normal then popped her into her cot awake but sleepy and I rubbed her back for a few seconds. The first night I lay on the floor next to the cot with a hand on her if she cried and when she finally settled down I rubbed her back until she fell asleep. The next night I lay next to the cot but didn't put a hand on her but used my voice to calm her. Then each night after that I moved further and further away towards the door. I am now just WO once she is in the cot. Here is my thread that I started for support, if you have a read it will probably give you a better idea of how things went. http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=215665.0

[FroggyMom]

Hi there!

Just checking in on you to see if you have started the sleep training process and how it is going.  I agree with Bex that it sounds like GW is the best bet for you and DD.  Similarly, my DS was always rocked to sleep until he was 14 months old.  At that point, his sleep went all wonky, and he was waking up almost every hour of the night.  He could not settle himself back to sleep; therefore, I was up and down most of the night rocking him back to sleep.  It was at this point that we decided to do GW. 

At first, I slept on an air mattress by DS's crib and held his hand as he fell asleep.  Then, I stayed on the air mattress by the crib, but only used my voice for consoling (no touch).  Once he was able to easily settle this way, I started moving closer to the door until I had a chair right outside his door where he could still hear, but not see, me.  Up until last week, I was just able to put him in his crib and walk out, and he would settle himself to sleep.  However, last week, he climbed out of his crib, and we had to make the move to a BBB. 

Since moving to the BBB, I am having to do a sort-of revised version of GW to get him to stay in toddler bed.  He has had a pretty easy transition to the toddler bed, and I attribute that to his ability to sleep independently in his crib before making this transition.  I can not recommend GW highly enough!!!!

Good luck!!