Bedtime Anxiety

McGuireMommy

My daughter is just a few days shy of 18 months old.  For the last two weeks, bed time has been awful.  Normally, she falls asleep with me or DH and a bottle, and we put her in bed either asleep or drowsy, but awake and she'll do the rest herself.  Lately, the second she realizes she's in her crib and not with one of us, she screams for hours.  Nothing calms her down.  Sometimes she even throws up she gets so upset.  We aim for her to be in bed and sleeping around 9 o'clock, but lately she won't fall asleep without a battle until 12:30 am or later.  We've moved the bedtime routine, we've varied the bedtime routine, we've moved dinner time.  I've tried everything I can think of, and for whatever reason, I can't help her to go to bed peacefully.  Please help! 

namara5532

First off, is she healthy?  Is she acting normal during the day?  Is she teething?

If she's healthy, I suggest some tough love.  A version of CIO or sleep lady shuffle may help her learn to go to sleep by herself.  If you feel like you want to throw a bottle in with her, give her a bottle while she's in the crib, tell her goodnight, and leave.  It's heartwrenching to hear LO cry, but she needs the sleep.

She's old enough to not need to be fed to sleep.  But it sounds like part of the problem is being transferred to the crib after a feeding.  If you want to feed her before bed, I suggest putting her down before she falls asleep in your arms.

Jmcmahon21

kbruington:

I'm totally not paying attention to the problems at hand but instead focusing on an 18 month old falling alseep with a bottle! What about brushing her teeth?!  

I can only speak for myself but we are still on one bottle before bed and we brush his teeth after he drinks it.