I wish i had some magic solution!!!!!
My DD is nearly fourteen months and has coslept since about four months as she just could not sleep on her own. She has gone through periods where we think she is getting closer to sleeping on her own but within one to two weeks she is back to the start again. She is the worst with me she has to actually sleep on me in bed. I am now eighteen weeks pregnant with number two so this is very quickly becoming a problem. She is better with DH as she sleeps next to him in bed. We have started trying to do day sleeps in her big girl bed in her own room but when she got sick two weeks ago this stopped, she just refused and now needs us to be with her for day sleeps too.
I FEEL YOUR PAIN!!!! Seriously!!!!
I too can't do controlled crying, she is the same just gets worse and worse and it distresses both of us.
I have no idea what we are going to do i am clinging to the hope that her sleeping will improve as she gets older or that the new baby is a really good sleeper and can go into a cot.
So i wish i had a solution to give you but all i can say is hang in there and i hope that we both get some sleep eventually!!
Bedtime routine:
Dinner, In the Night Garden, bath, story, bed. This starts at 6pm and he's in bed for 7.30, asleep before 8. Only worry is when we have to go somewhere with no digital TV (free digital TV, I don't expect people to shell out money for DS!) but at least we can download from the BBC and let DS watch In the Night Garden that way.
One parent does bath and bed - the other says goodnight after In the Night Garden. If he sees us both in his bath he wants us both to get him to sleep. Sure, he cries a bit for DH but he's with his Daddy and he's not distressed crying, just tired and eczema pain crying (the moisturiser stings!).
WRT the teddy, DS picked his comfort toy aged 1 year. Sure, it was a toy that had been in his cot before, but he wasn't fussed about Herr Hare before then. Now he wakes in a blind panic if he can't find the bunny. He has 3 different cries: the first is "I'm awake and nearly asleep... I'm off again" (sometimes we have to stand at his doorway for him to drift off), the second is "I'm awake and need a bit of help to go back to sleep because I'm the wrong temperature/getting teeth/eczema stings" and that's about 5 minutes, the third is "WHERE IS MY BUNNY? THE WORLD IS ENDING! FIND THE BUNNY!" (There's also the "I'm up for the day and bored of playing alone" cry but that's different from a night cry.)
As for "not settle" for Dad - make sure Dad is doing all the right things! DH and I now have different ways of settling DS but at first it was "he won't do it for me" ie "I can't be bothered to learn how to do it and don't like getting up at night or giving up my free time." A bit of crying with his dad won't kill him - Daddy loves his son and can care for him, your DS will soon realise that. Maybe more things together in the day would help that attachment form.
Just a quickie- can you attach his dummy to his clothes so he can find it again? or put more than one dummy in the cot so if he throws one and then wants it again there is another to suck. Will only work as long as he doesn't throw them all, but maybe worth a try?
Just coming at it from another angle...how many naps a day does he have? If it's two, maybe it's time to cut one out? I know the obvious thing is to blame his cold for throwing him out of whack but it may have just coincided with him needing a different sleep pattern.
My DS...also not a good sleeper, couldn't settle on his own (still doesn't and he's 2 next week) and we never could do CC either.
It would have been around 14 months that he was still happily having 2 naps a day but suddenly just would not go to sleep at night and we couldn't get him to go down till 9pm or so...but it was hard work because even though we knew he was tired, he was all hyped up. We cut out a nap and got the evenings back.
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