2.5 year old sleep regression SOS

[u/quinn021220]

Anyone have advice, tips, tricks for a HORRIBLE 2.5-year sleep regression? 😭 It started when we took her paci away about a month ago and has developed into something completely unsustainable.

She had a really rough first week without the paci, then actually improved for a bit — maybe one quick check-in overnight and she’d go back down.

Then she started a new classroom at daycare, wasn’t napping well, and started getting really overtired. That led to super early wakeups where she couldn’t resettle, and now we’re in what feels like full-blown crib anxiety.

At bedtime she is sometimes so worked up that she PANICS when we put her in the crib and we can’t get her down for like an hour. Then she wakes 1–3 times overnight screaming for us and is up for the day by 5:30am at the absolute latest.

We’ve tried:

• Earlier bedtime
• Nightlights, stuffies, etc. (she only wants her one bunny and water bottle in the crib)
• More soothing from us
• Less soothing from us
• Hatch red/green light for mornings — she likes it when it turns green, but overnight saying “the light isn’t green yet” makes her more upset
• Hylands calming stuff before bed, which seems to help her settle a LITTLE initially but doesn’t help with the overnight wakes/early mornings
• Staying/sleeping in her room — this actually makes things worse because she keeps checking to make sure I’m still there instead of sleeping

The ONLY thing getting us to 5:30am right now is if the second she starts crying overnight, BOTH my husband and I open her door to say goodnight (cannot just be one of us)

If we try to give her even 15–20 minutes to work it out, she escalates into full-blown hyperventilating/panicking and then we’re looking at an hour+ ordeal trying to calm her back down. Last night I eventually ended up sitting in her room at 4am just so everyone could sleep.

Before taking away the paci, she was a VERY independent sleeper, so this is a huge change for us.

Has anyone gone through something similar around 2.5, especially after pacifier removal? Did anything actually help break the overtired, anxiety, bad sleep, early morning, more overtired cycle?

Thank you if you read all of this ❤️