2.5 year old won't settle

[laura109]

Hi ladies. My little girl is three I'm Feb and has recently gone into a big bed so baby bump can have her cot when he joins is next month. She loves her new bedroom. We play with her in it. She's happy enough in it but since she hasn't been in her cot nighttime is hell. I know it's extremely common but being heavily pregnant I am pretty stressed out not getting time in the evenings and worrying about her being up all night along with her new brother.

She used to go to bed no problems when she had a cot. She self settled. We didn't need to stay with her and usually by 8.30 we got to be adults and have a chat and watch a film or something.

Since the bed we have had to lay in her bed and wait patiently for her to fall asleep. The problem is she is taking an hour and half plus to settle and the last 3 nights she's wide awake till 11. We get no time together anymore due to this. She can climb over the baby gate which is too dangerous to chance. She nearly vomits when we try leave through hysteria. She just won't stay in her room. We've tried everything from being firm to offering to buy her a toy if she falls asleep on her own. Tried naps and no naps. Shorter naps. Brought her special bedtime books. Done money rewards. Lights on. Music. Taking a special toy to her bed for a sleepover. Praised her. Let her ring people about her big girl bed. When she finally drifts off she stays in her room until 1am up to 4am then she comes stomping along the landing into our room.

I'm absolutely exhausted tonight. She's still away at 10.30 I can't lift her easily anymore. I have not managed to do any of my jobs as I've spent 2.5 hours trying to settle her.

Now I can't let her cry it out as I have no way of containing her in her room now she can master the stair gates. I can't keep putting her back in as I can't lift her and she's right behind me again. I can't leave her upstairs alone unsettled as she could hurt herself.

Is this just a stage that we should just go with and hope she comes out of it? I've got 5 weeks left and I really want to solve the problem before baby arrives. I can't spend my evenings battling her.

 

[Zephram]

Is she still napping? It’s very common to have bedtime battles at that age due to naps not making them tired enough until late. You could experiment with dropping her nap or cutting it short at 45mins-1 hour max and see if that helps. DS1 was an absolute nightmare to get to sleep at 2.5 if he had a nap. We stopped him napping every day at that age and he started going to bed at night very easily 2 hours earlier than if he’d had a nap.

DS2 is around 2 years and 4 months and also no longer naps every day. No nap days he is asleep at 615pm, out like a light. Nap days he is up until nearly 9, mucking around. We stayed with both of our kids at bedtime at that age.

They do get tired in the late arvo with no nap, but they very quickly adapt. I personally would rather deal with some late afternoon grumpiness than spend hours getting my kids to sleep. I’m pregnant too, so I feel your pain as on the days my DS2 has a nap he mucks around for at least an hour while I sit with him.

Napping becomes a vicious cycle when they start to grow out of it as if they have a nap they aren’t tired at bedtime and stay up late and then consequently get less night sleep making them need a nap the next day, and so on. So you have to battle through for a couple of days while they adjust to no nap and longer night sleep.

Both our kids were in big beds very early - 19 months for DS1 and 14 months for DS2 - so it’s not necessarily just the change of bed, it’s age related mostly. Make sure you be consistent in how you react to her mucking around and that will help too. Take her back to bed and tell her it’s time to sleep and nothing else.

 

[laura109]

Thanks so much for your reply. I will try to stop her naps and see how we go. It's hard as you said because she's not getting enough at night she's shattered in the day. She tends to get herself on the sofa and fall asleep so I will have to try to distract her from it. It's not going to be easy stopping her. It's currently 2.30 she's had 3 hours sleep and just woke us up and she's in our bed. My partners gone in her bed as there's not enough room. I just feel like this is not ideal at all I feel like we are living separate lives due to him working in the day and us sleeping separately due to this. I'm hoping it's the norm for many families. Thanks so much for you reply. It's definitely hard being pregnant and trying to function through these toddler years. As you will know the lack of sleep and constantly having to clean up after her is hard now I'm getting towards the last month. I'm just trying to get us all on a good position for when the baby comes but am clearly failing it seems

 

[Chinadoll13]

When my son was that age, we moved him into a big boy bed too. He was so excited to get his own room and a big bed. Unfortunately, he never stayed there. Same as your daughter, we would either have to lay with him until he fell asleep (which could sometimes take hours) or he would get up in the middle of the night and crawl into our bed. It was definitely a tough phase and I sympathize with you. We finally ended the phase by doing two things. First, we weened ourselves away from him, meaning that if we laid down with him, we didn’t actually lay in the bed with him. We either sat in a chair in the room or laid on the floor. After a few days or week, we would gradually move closer to the door until we were out of the room. I will say that it did take a lot of patience but doing it gradually helped our son make the adjustment. As far as keeping him in his bed, we plugged back in his baby monitor so that if he wanted to talk with us, he could without getting out of bed. This allowed him to know that we were still close even though we weren’t in the room. We also used one of those night lights that shine the stars on the ceiling to make the darkness less scary. I hope that these suggestions help your little one. Good luck and God bless!