Two weeks into the nap being capped at 1.5 hours. She now wants to basically nurse to sleep and is having trouble settling herself at bedtime. Her second year molars have been “coming in” for over two months now with very little progress (one tiny white spot peeking through) so I’ve been trying to give her the assistance she needs but I fear it has just made things worse. She’ll nurse, I’ll brush her teeth and we’ll say good night. She asks for my hand on her back, which I did until she was almost asleep, but now that doesn’t even work. For the past week, she has asked to be nursed after she’s been in the crib for a couple minutes so I turn on the light, nurse her again and put her down. We repeat this 3-4 times until she’s almost asleep and will go into the crib. The past couple nights she’s pretty much nursed till she was asleep.
Tonight I told her after we finish nursing and put you in the crib, no more milk till morning. She is capable of understanding this. Two minutes after she goes into the crib and my hand is on her back, she asks for milk. I repeat we can have milk in the morning. She then asks me for a song, then milk, then another song, then milk, then water, then milk, etc. This went on and on and on with me repeating she could have milk in the morning until I asked my husband to take over. She finally fell asleep at 9:20.
A couple things to note:
1) she goes down easier for hubby (he puts her down for nap every day because it takes him 5 mins but if I do it it takes 15)
2) it seems she can’t settle herself at bedtime, but can at naptime. For naps, hubby takes her for a walk, takes her upstairs, puts her in her crib and most days walks right out. If she’s not tired enough he sometimes has to put his hand on her back for a few
3) she is now getting less than 11 hours total sleep (before it was 11 or 11.25 or so) so it’s just getting worse. She is waking earlier, I think because it is taking us so long to get her to sleep that she is OT by the time she falls asleep and therefore wakes early.
My questions are:
Where do we go from here? Cut nap even shorter? How do we break the cycle of her being so needy with me so I can put her down easily? I really dislike having to depend on hubby so much. Luckily he works form home, but I’d like to be able to handle this myself some of the time!!! Thank you!!!
