Hi moms! My almost 18 month old daughter used to be a wonderful sleeper. Always in bed by 7pm. She takes one nap for about 1 1/2 hours...always is her crib. The last few nights she wants me to hold her on my lap to go to sleep. The minute we walk to her room, she cries. Then I put her in her crin and she cries harder. What should I do? Put her in her crib crying? Do I take her out and hold her for a while? I don't want to ruin her great sleeping habits. Has this situation happened to anybody else? I'm thinking maybe something spooked her in her room, a shadow on the wall, ect..I'll take any advise. Thanks in advance.
She's giving you cues that she just needs to be held more than usual as she's growing into her next phase of development. Might be time to try a 'big girl bed' with her. You can make a big deal about it and get her really interested in sleeping in a bed as opposed to a crib, which it sounds like she's grown out of.
This is pretty normal. It's ok to let her cry for a little bit.
We are having the same problem however, our 21 month old learned to climb out of the crib. We had to move him into a regular twin bed. He cries for a short time at nap time and bedtime. The crying is getting less and less. Hang in there.
Its the age mostly, My perfect sleeper started to wake up in the middle of the night again, she is 17 months old. it may be that she is just figuring out that dark is scary or that if she cries mom will hold her. You might try a night light or give her a special sleeping toy, my daughter and son both have little stuffed animals that they can't sleep with out. Other than that i just reasure her and lay her down and rub her back, so that i am not just holding her to go to sleep. Once she settles down i tell her good night and walk out of the room. Sometimes it take two or three times to get her to stay settled and not scream but over all about 15 minutes and she is settled for the night.
Good luck
I'm kind of going through the same thing. I think my son is getting his molars which is causing the problem. I made sure to hold him in his room with the door shut and telling him we can't leave the room. If I got him in the crib and he started sitting up I patted the bed and told him to lay down and he did than if he started to lift his head I just told him to lay down its okay and he eventually fell asleep. Good luck
Our son did the same thing about that age and so what we did to adapt the bedtime/naptime schedule is we will read him 1 or 2 books and then rock him for a little while (5 minutes or so) and then we tell him it is time to rest and cover up. He then goes into his bed and we tuck him in. He doesn't cry often at all now (unless he doesn't want rest time). Hope this helps.
Hi J.,
You've already gotten lots of good advice. This is just a phase they go through, for some reason. Seems strange that a good sleeper, all at once, decides they don't like to go to bed, but they do. Some parents opt to rock them, and hold them, but the best advice I can give you is to stick with your normal bedtime activities. If she does cry, it shouldn't last long, and she will get back to her regular sleeping habits. If you decide to do things differently, children are so smart, they catch on to this very quickly, and then don't want to go back to their good sleeping habits.
C.
My daughter who is now two and a half went through something similiar around the same age. I would I opted to let her cry awhile before going in to check on her. If she continued to cry I would get up with her for awhile. It is possible that your baby's natural clock has changed, and perhaps 7 is too early for bedtime now. That was the root cause for my daughter. I kept her up an extra hour, and the problems went away fairly quickly,.
