Should I sleep train

amother

Sun, Jan 05 2025, 7:26 pm

Slowly going crazy…
My 18 month old still wakes up about 4-5 times a night and takes any where from 45 min to 2 hours to go back to sleep.
There was a time where she did better but then she got sick and was waking up a lot and now we’re back to this.

She’s not hungry, I’ve offered her food and she doesn’t want, she just wants to be rocked in the rocking chair.

I’ve never sleep trained her because I don’t think I can handle it but I’m getting to the point where both my husband and I aren’t sleeping and neither is she!

She’s very very stubborn, we’ve tried putting her in the crib and trying to pat her to sleep and it was a very big fail.

Any advice on what works best at this age?

And for the moms who are going to come at me and be all like “and this is why I sleep trained my 6 week old” that’s great for you but isn’t something that would work for my family. Waking up with her wasn’t an issue for me and didn’t bother me until now so I was happy to go to her but now we’re getting to the point where it’s becoming too much.
I’m also a little more comfortable doing this now because she’s actually at an age where she can understand if I say “mommy is right here next to you, time to go to sleep, etc etc” where as a newborn has no idea why this is happening

surviving

Sun, Jan 05 2025, 10:28 pm

You definitely should! She's old enough to understand that you aren't abandoning her and you're just in the next room. She'll probably cry a lot the first few days but you should stick to it. There's no reason for her to be waking in middle of the night at this age.

It sounds like shes used to your comfort to go back to sleep. You'd need to replace yourself with other comfort items like a blanket/ pillow/ noise/ machine/ teddy bear. You can try taking her to the store and buying a security teddy so she feels involved. They make weighted teddy's that you can lay on her chest.

amother

Vanilla

Sun, Jan 05 2025, 10:35 pm

There's a massive difference at this age. This is the right age to teach her to sleep. Also she has a sleep problem. Its not biologically normal for a toddler to wake up that often at night.

I think you should teach her how to sleep. First of all, basic sleep hygiene. You know, consistent bedtime and bedtime routine and all that. And then train her to sleep in her crib. Just be consistent. She's plenty old enough to understand boundaries. And she's plenty old enough to have a big tantrum by crying for hours. But she's not crying because she feels abandoned and scared, she's crying in protest that she doesn't want to stay in her crib. There's no harm done if you let her cry and either sit next to her or come back and keep checking in on her. And when she stops crying it's because she's accepted that you mean business about this crib thing, not because she's given up on getting your comfort.

If she's still struggling to sleep like you described, I would ask the doctor about checking for sleep apnea. Or other things that can disrupt sleep.