I've hardly ever been able to get a consistent routine with my 19 month old! I've learnt along the way that she's got really low sleep needs and a lot of our issues have been due to me not believing she really needs that little sleep and trying to get her to be on a more 'age appropriate' schedule. She WAS sleeping through the night (in between teething, uT days, sickness etc) and has needed her one nap cut to about 1 hr for at least 2.5 months, with a 12.5 hr day. If she's UT she tends to either scream the house down the min you put her to bed, or goes to bed ok but wakes in the night and won't go back to sleep. Bedtimes have been edging later for the past month or two and we get into a cycle where she won't go to bed cos she's UT then she wants more milk etc and then gets severely OT by the time we can get her down. On top of this with some bad teething pains and a few bugs she's had quite a few night awakenings the past couple of weeks and has ended up in our bed a lot. This has now resulted in her expecting to come to our bed when she wakes so we are in a total pickle!!
Bedtimes were getting to 10pm some nights and she refused to nap at nursery a couple of times... She used to be a completely independent sleeper..
So we decided to try cutting out the nap.. She was going to bed amazing but getting soooooo grumpy all afternoon. And waking still in the night wanting into our bed.
Totally grumpy madam over the weekend so gave her 45 mins yesterday, she was great all afternoon, so happy, and went to bed great. And I decided to do PD in the night too, took an hour but she then slept in her own bed (with me lying next to the cot :-() but slept and woke up in her own bed. So we thought maybe we were premature with the nap cutting, gave her 45 mins today as she was shattered and bedtime she seemed shattered, was falling asleep changing nappy, put her in the cot and she just screams the house down!,, :-((( took another hour to get her down, I'm soooo frustrated, our nights are taken up with a fury of discussions between me and OH, is she tired is she not tired, is she still hungry..
I feel like there has been so much uncertainty that we've gone from I dependant sleeping to needing us there all the time.. Is this just a regression or should I be cutting this nap.
Please help!,,
