I don't know what is up with this. DD has been a great sleeper up until
about 2 weeks ago. Now she is fighting both naptime and nighttime sleep,
even though she is tired. She will lay in the crib rolling around,
throwing things out, taking off her pants etc for an hour and a half. I
have tried going in and laying her back down, I have tried not going in,
I've tried putting her down earlier, I've tried putting her down later.
I've tried waking her up earlier (and that's just a disaster). I've
tried making her room cooler, different jammies... I have no idea what
to do or why she's suddenly having so much trouble falling asleep. Any
ideas?
Re: XP: 19mo Fighting sleep!
I agree with PPs, it's probably a sleep regression phase. My DS recently went through one. A few "a-ha!" moments for us included:
-he understands more of what we say and is more prepared when we tell him what's about to happen (e.g., "We'll nurse and then I'll lay you down in your crib and you're going to go night-night.")
-his imagination is kicking in, so we've been playing out bedtime scenes with his animals
-he's paying attention when we read him the night-time story about Elmo (W's favorite) snuggling his bunny (he has resisted all our attempts at lovies until just recently)
-his memory is improving, and he really absorbs our praise when he spends all night in his crib or takes a good long nap
This might be no-brainer stuff for other mamas but my DS always surprises me, like oh, you totally get that now! And we have found that most of our old tricks are not working - we're now putting him to bed later, lowered the volume of his white noise, and I now nurse him almost all the way to sleep instead of to drowsy but awake - all of this against the advice of most sleep experts!
It sounds like your DD might just be trying to figure out falling alseep for herself. I hope she does so soon!
I would just find a routine and stick with it. Like others have said this is just a phase and they are just unwinding before bed. DS does the same thing. We have our bed time routine but he still needs a few minutes to just chill out before he actually falls asleep.