I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem...
Your lo has had some dependency issues for sleep, whether it's bf, bottle, rocking, you being in the room etc and you finally get to the point where you are no longer doing that accidental parenting.. but your lo still doesn't sleep!! My 19 mo old lo is now only sleeping 9 1/2 hours at night and 1 1/2 during the day and it can take hours of chatting and tossing and turning to fall asleep especially at bedtime and if she wakes in the night. (no not me, her
)
It seems like during toddlerhood you can no longer rely on their need to sleep to just send them off...they need to be able to soothe themselves and unwind, how do you help them with that? You've taken away their prop and it has been replaced with...nothing. And they have so much going on. How do you teach a toddler how to sleep? We've got the blackout curtains, the white noise, the lovey, a winddown routine, consistent bedtime, naptime, mealtimes...but the only thing that seems to finally send her off is exhaustion. So you have an independent sleeping exhausted toddler.
I don't mean for this to turn into a rant but I am frustrated and quite frankly feeling guilty. It feels like I've exchanged my need to get a good night's sleep for my lo's ability to get one. Is there some point that "sleep training" just isn't possible? ie if you don't get them sleeping independently by 12 months you should just forget it until they're like 3 when you can start trying to teach them relaxation techniques or something?
