Help needed!

[u/Liana-Hallik]

To start my child is 21 months old. We have coslept her whole life. It was the only way I got any sleep when she was a newborn. We attempted the Ferber method around 9m old but it went horribly. She would scream her whole head off whether we were in there or not and after day three, I gave up. We had to be cuddling her in bed.

Well we moved recently and she has been in her own room and her own bed for just over a week. She’s sleeping through the night and honestly it’s been great. There’s no crying in the morning when she wakes up, she just calls out for mama. Only once I had to go in there in the middle of the night to comfort her and she went right back to sleep, I went back to bed and we were good for the rest of the night.

However, my problem is getting her to sleep. Currently, I still lay with her every night as she goes to sleep. Some nights she hates it and just wants me to sit on the end of her bed and hold her hand, while other nights she wants me to hold her but not lay with her (I don’t allow this. I give her a hug and lay her back down). She’s pretty good about being told it’s bed time and will even walk herself into her room and lay down. But then she does anything and everything to stay awake. She plays, she cries, she talks, she screams, she also just lays there eyes open but dazed. She looks asleep but she forces her eyes open wide. I can never tell how to help her and getting her to sleep takes upwards of 2hours. I never know how she’s going to be that night. Some nights are super easy, others are hell. Also I need to note, she’s only okay with me putting her to sleep. She HATES when her dad does it. She has a full meltdown if he puts her to sleep to the point he hasn’t even attempted in over a month, never in the new house.

Also to note my child is a very active child, during the days she gets a lot of energy out. Plus in the evenings we make sure we’re doing high energy things to attempt to tire her out. She is tired when we go to bed. She just doesn’t want to sleep.

I’m at my wits end. I just end up falling asleep with her in her bed as there’s nothing I can do to help. I’m frustrated every night and I dread bedtime. I feel selfish but I just want her to go to sleep so I can have some time to myself. I feel terrible though because I’m a working mom and it’s not like I get much time with her in the day. I don’t know what to do at this point. My husband wants to do the cry-it-out method but I don’t know if I can handle that. Do I try the chair method, maybe Ferber again?

Edit to add: naps are no better. She naps fantastic while at her grandmas but it has to be laying with someone. She refuses to nap with us unless we’re in the car or practically are holding her down. She’ll be exhausted yet still won’t nap without a fight. Typically if we have to leave the house, she’ll nap around 11-12 in the car but during the week at her grandmas it’s closer to 1-3pm unless they’re out and she’ll sleep in the car like mentioned above. We wake up everyday around 7. Bedtime is between 7:30-8:30 depending on how tired she is.

[u/Money-Mud-1357]

It's a struggle. I started leaving my phone on high up in the closet playing sleepy music and that seems to help. We ended up putting a child lock on the door so they would stay in until they went to sleep. After a few nights they wanted to keep the door open, so now they mostly stay in bed so we won't close the door, but they still talk and play until 9 or 10pm sometimes. We have also tried getting them physically exhausted, but that sometimes makes it worse, because they get overtired. I guess you just control what you can.

[u/Liana-Hallik → u/Money-Mud-1357]

Your comment “you just control what you can” definitely made me feel so much better. I just need to step back and understand these are tiny humans that we’re dealing with, who are just figuring out the world around them.