My Toddler hasn’t slept properly in 6 weeks (neither have I)
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So the baby now 20 months was a great sleep, we had her in a great routine and she went down easily slept through the night and woke up in good temper. Then suddenly this stopped, she began not wanting to go to bed, waking in the night calling for mummy. Towards the middle of the first week we bought Gina Fords complete sleep guid and tried to put it in practise. By the end of the week we felt guilty as hell and were deciding GF was a bit of too regimental and unfeeling for us.
“The Complete Sleep Guide For Contented Babies and Toddlers” (Gina Ford)
By the end of the week she was really quite ill, with a raging temperature up around 39.5. Then she developed diarrhoea and her stomach has not been the same since, now she complains that her tummy hurts alot of the time and is not just aware of passing urine and stool but is frightened of it, despite now having gotten over the illness. We gave up with GF and just went on consoling and lowering the fear factor in our sick child.
The illness and its after effects have dragged on depite seeing 2 doctors a health visitor and now a homeopath (who is at last someone who can help). She sleeps through the nigh rarely and now wakes at 5. She doesn’t want a bath never mind bed, if she wakes in the night she 1 out of 10 times can put herself back to sleep and now she has developed a cough.
So if your child suddenly develops an allergy to going to bed or sleeping problems after being fine with bed time, don’t automatically reach for a baby sleep manual, it could just be that she is ill, about to be ill or genuinely needs help as she reaches a life stage whee she becomes more aware of her individuality and seperartion. When we sat down and thought about it in our tired and emotional state recently, we remembered she had been ill last year in the same way (with a weeks lead in time and disturbed sleep).
We may go back to Gina Ford, as she has some good points but following one persons view religiously without trusting your own experience and gut feelings is, in my opinion, a mistake.
One last thing, we did put her back in her grobag sleeping bag, we had taken her out of it thinking she had out grown it, where in fact it does seem to make her more cozy (its only a light weight 1 tog) If you dont know what a grobag is see this wiki link… Sleeping bag (infant)
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