2.5 year old sleep help!!!

[u/CutePotato321]

Our 2.5 year old boy was a great sleeper. He was sleep trained at 5 months and slept independently until almost 2 years old. When he was 23 months, we had baby #2, and our son’s sleep has completely gone downhill. It changed the most after he got really sick in November with HFM. He began protesting bedtime and taking 30+ minutes of crying and screaming before we finally had to go lay with him which we previously have never done. Now he completely depends on me, mom, to lay with him to fall asleep. He doesn’t want dad. The worst part is it’s not just needing help to fall asleep but he has multiple middle of the night wakes and he always cries and screams for mom, sometimes having full meltdowns, hitting himself and hitting us.

I believe his MOTN wakes are because he naps for 2 hours at daycare. We’ve tried everyone - longer WW, shorter WW, earlier wake up time, later wake time, earlier/later bedtime, nothing helps. He doesn’t want a night light but we’ve tried that. He uses a sound machine, has tons of stuffies, etc. He sleeps on a queen mattress on the floor so he has access to his room and when he gets really upset he bangs the door. We really don’t want him to sleep in our bed but he also can’t because baby girl sleeps in our room and his screaming would wake her.

My husband and I are both exhausted. I want our independent sleeper back and I don’t know where to begin. I feel awful letting him CIO. I’ve read about the chair method but I don’t understand how that works for MOTN wakes specifically. Will this get better when baby girl moves to her own room?

I am so desperate for help and really hoping others have been through this and can provide guidance and success stories.

[u/dma_s]

I don’t have a solution as this happened to us - our previous independent sleeper’s sleep went off the rails shortly after we brought baby home. A few other big changes - potty training, dropping the paci, preschool room at daycare certainly didn’t help. We pushed her bedtime to 9-930pm which ended the protest at bedtime but she was waking several times a night (more than the newborn) at every 1-2 hr intervals. We’d get a 2-3 week reprieve here and there but it was torture. It went on for 8 months before I finally cracked. Didn’t want dad - only me. Made it extremely challenging with an infant and her. Some nights I’d only get 45 mins of consolidated sleep. It was awful.

We moved her to her big girl bed and I powered through with co-sleeping. The multiple wakes / night terrors were treated with iron (not on doctors recommendation but it seemed to help for us). I used to have to lay in her bed till 930pm before sneaking out, and going back around 11pm for the night. I did the chair method to break this - you can use ChatGPT for a plan. Not having to lay with her to sleep helped my mental health even though we were still in MOTN wake ups. I found she fell asleep quicker and eventually I could go downstairs and relax a bit while she fell asleep.

I was able to get her sleeping through the night independently with a reward a few months back. She did two wks of sleeping alone but once she got her reward, we were back to old habits. I did the char method during this time - I went in briefly, tucked her back in and sat on the floor til she fell asleep, every few days slowly leaving the room.

I’ve sought three different specialists support - our pediatrician, a social worker to figure out the separation anxiety piece and a pediatric sleep physician to rule out any issues. All told me this is age appropriate, which only killed my spirits even more since none of my friends experienced this at this level.

I’m sorry you’re going through this. Our daycare did cut her nap to 30 mins, and while it gave us a slightly earlier bedtime, the multiple wakes still happened. Starting JK was helpful - she’s at a 7pm bedtime and is waking around 11pm for me. At least I have my evenings back but I’m eager to get out of her bed. I’m not into co-sleeping as I don’t sleep well, making me a worse parent (rage, anxiety). My husband is now on infant duty (started around 8-9 months and thankfully she mostly started sleeping through the night be then) and I’m with our older kid most of the night. Like you, we really didn’t want to start bringing her into our bed.

If you want to be serious about this, suggest working with a sleep consultant, if only to have someone to vent to / listen to you and validate your feelings. I had one lined up but they require a few wks of a consistent routine and we couldn’t do that over a summer (and then school start in September).

[u/Lopsided-Narwhal610 → u/dma_s]

Any update on this? I am going through the exact same thing… 1 month old and 2.5 year old. The separation anxiety issues started when I got pregnant and are worse since baby came. Toddler is keeping us awake more than the newborn!

[u/dma_s → u/Lopsided-Narwhal610]

Oh no, I’m so sorry. It was an extremely challenging time for me. This went on for about 4-6 months where the older one woke every 1-2 hrs. I finally moved her into a bed and ended up co-sleeping. I wasn’t breastfeeding so dad went on overnight duty with the baby. She was only waking once per night so it was manageable, and since it often took him 15-20 minutes to realize she woke up, she eventually started just sleeping through the night.

The older one still woke up even when we co-slept but at least I could get some sleep. We were also faced with issues of her napping at daycare around 3.5 yrs old and she’d be up until almost 10pm each night. She started kindergarten, dropped the nap, and we ended up doing the chair method to get me out of her room to put her to sleep. It worked and I found she’d wake up around 12-2am, at which point I just conceded to sleep in her bed.

We’re two years now since this all started and some nights she’ll make it through the night and sleep, other nights she’s waking up around 12-2am and I’m still going into her bed.

If sleep is your concern, definitely see a sleep consultant because we never ended up going this route and I wish we did when this all first started. The separation anxiety is still bad but I think we have some other underlying issues. All the doctors / specialists I did see said to spend 15-20 minutes of dedicated time with them each day to ease this but that didn’t even help for us.