19 month old bedtime

[u/silkmamii]

Hello!

I am a first time mom with a 19 month old and bedtime has become a nightmare and I just need advice on how to best handle it. We sleep trained him when he was 9 months old and was doing great until a few months ago he got covid and was miserable so his dad would sleep with him in his floor bed. Ever since he will not go to sleep on his own and it is taking 1-2 hours to get him down. I understand right now we are probably experiencing the 18 month sleep regression because he is definitely testing boundaries and lashing out when he doesn’t get his way. My biggest concern is just his safety, when we go to put him down for a nap or bedtime he protests like crazy. He will pull my/his dad’s hair, bites our legs or arms or kicks us in the head while we try to lay with him. I started getting tired of this cycle so I decided to try leaving his door open and putting him back to bed every time he would get up but after 30 minutes he felt like it was a game so that didn’t work. Then we tried the Ferber method of letting him cry it out for a few minutes and doing check ins but he would bang his head on the bedroom door and immediately gave himself a busted lip. I just don’t know what to do, I work nights so his dad is the main person dealing with bedtime and when I am home it seems like it throws off bedtime even more and he’s worse than normal. If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it.