DD (16mo) was a really good sleeper. Slept through from 7 weeks and was pretty good for her first year and a bit, with the odd hiccup put down to teething or growth spurts. At 9 months I used the verbal reassurance technique to wean her off feeding to sleep at night which worked fantastic and she was a perfect sleeper from then on.
We then moved house at the start of June (at 14mo). It took a little while for DD to settle in but after we dropped back to one day sleep, things seemed on the improve (not perfect but pretty good).
Not long afterwards, she started being very unsettled to go to bed at night (day sleep was great) and since she was teething (all 4 eye teeth) and I had horrid morning sickness, we ended up letting her fall asleep on us most nights as it was the only way she would go to sleep and stay that way.
After a few weeks of that, I decided I had to sort her sleep so we decided to use verbal reassurance again since it had worked so well at 9mo.
First night of that and she climbed out of her cot after 30 minutes of screaming, chipping her tooth in the process and from then on was terrified of the cot for both day and night sleeps.
That resulted in sorting out a temporary big bed (double mattress on the floor) as her new room is in the middle of being painted. Once that is completed, she will go into a king single bed we have in storage.
She is now taking anywhere from 1/2 an hour (on a fantastic day) to 3 hours or more to get to sleep (both day and night) and will only fall asleep if I lie down with her and the occasional night we end up rocking her to sleep on the lazyboy (last resort).
We have a solid night time routine, she is clearly tired and ready for bed but just refuses to go to sleep. She constantly tries to get up and leave the room, wants to play, go see dad, anything to not go to sleep. Eventually (after lots of laying her back down etc) she starts getting a bit upset and either falls asleep (good night) or works herself up more and more until she finally crashes hours later, again sometimes on the lazyboy.
Every night Im getting more and more anxious of how in the hell im going to deal with this when baby #2 comes along. DH helps as much as he can but his work commitments mean that bedtime is left mostly to me. I am now halfway through my pregnancy and feel as though I would have never gotten pregnant to start with if DDs sleep had been like this before (even though this baby is very much wanted and the timing in theory works really well for us).
She is teething (2nd molar coming and going) but I dont know if that is enough to be causing this, if there is something else up or if a bad habit has just formed. Any suggestions on how I can sort her sleep problems would be great - we are heading to the doctor monday to rule out anything else.
Also, have you had similar problems with a firstborn when a new baby has come, and how have you coped?
Im at a complete loss of what to do and feel as though Im banging my head against the wall - any advice or comments would be appreciated
Firstborn sleep issues vs newborn baby
Topic Options
Post Options
Thanks(0)
So it's normal to feel that way and you won't know until the baby is here what it's going to be like. Don't worry. 
