I won't say that DD's always been a piece of cake bedtime-wise, but for the most part she has. Even when she was a baby she'd usually go down without any fuss whatsoever, if I did the whole looking for sleep signals and rhythm thing. She moved into her toddler bed at Christmas, and we were expecting a big fuss, but there was nothing. We read her a story, tucked her in, sang her a lullaby, braced for the worst... and she went right to sleep. Since then it's been the same thing. Sometimes she reads in bed a bit (we leave the door to her room open so there's some light), but she hasn't made a fuss at bedtime (nap time is another matter, so yes she DOES know that she can get out of the bed! Also, for about a week she had no trouble getting out of the bed at 3am and coming to wake us up...).
There is a baby gate at her door, which is there because we have really weird stairs and it's not safe to put the gate at the top of them, and the stairs themselves are weird (we live in a very old house with extremely steep, narrow stairs... it's hard to describe, but if you've ever been on a sailboat with one of those steep staircases you have to go down backwards until you get used to it, it's not far from that) so we don't want her tackling them in the middle of the night. Her room is right at the top of the stairs.
And then for the past three nights (Sunday, Monday, and tonight) she has just been HYSTERICAL. I can't even really describe it. It's not even like she's screaming: just desperate hysterical sobs, calling for us, begging to go downstairs, begging for all sorts of things: her slippers, her shoes (?), a drink, crackers, a cupcake (which we don't even have!), a book (she has lots of books in her room). But it's just this really frantic, hysterical sobbing that turns into flailing screaming violent hysterics if we go near her. We try to bring into our bed to lie with us and she just screams and screams and won't let us touch her or sing to her. The past two nights we've given in and brought her downstairs and let her play until she's just too tired, and then she sleeps with us and is too tired to really protest too much (although she tries).
I'm completely at a loss: I'm obviously not adverse to lying with her, singing with her, rubbing her back, bringing her into our bed... but none of these things are working! If anything, they seem to make it even worse, if you consider violent thrashing and screaming "worse" than just the mournful breathless sobbing.
Anyone had anything similar? I have no idea what to do. She's sooo tired. I can't just let her stay up until 9 every night. She usually wakes up around 7, takes a shortish (1.5-2 hour) nap at about 12:30. I think she's starting to drop her nap, because some days she just plays in her room for an hour or so, but I'm okay with that, so long as she's relaxing a bit.
There is a baby gate at her door, which is there because we have really weird stairs and it's not safe to put the gate at the top of them, and the stairs themselves are weird (we live in a very old house with extremely steep, narrow stairs... it's hard to describe, but if you've ever been on a sailboat with one of those steep staircases you have to go down backwards until you get used to it, it's not far from that) so we don't want her tackling them in the middle of the night. Her room is right at the top of the stairs.
And then for the past three nights (Sunday, Monday, and tonight) she has just been HYSTERICAL. I can't even really describe it. It's not even like she's screaming: just desperate hysterical sobs, calling for us, begging to go downstairs, begging for all sorts of things: her slippers, her shoes (?), a drink, crackers, a cupcake (which we don't even have!), a book (she has lots of books in her room). But it's just this really frantic, hysterical sobbing that turns into flailing screaming violent hysterics if we go near her. We try to bring into our bed to lie with us and she just screams and screams and won't let us touch her or sing to her. The past two nights we've given in and brought her downstairs and let her play until she's just too tired, and then she sleeps with us and is too tired to really protest too much (although she tries).
I'm completely at a loss: I'm obviously not adverse to lying with her, singing with her, rubbing her back, bringing her into our bed... but none of these things are working! If anything, they seem to make it even worse, if you consider violent thrashing and screaming "worse" than just the mournful breathless sobbing.
Anyone had anything similar? I have no idea what to do. She's sooo tired. I can't just let her stay up until 9 every night. She usually wakes up around 7, takes a shortish (1.5-2 hour) nap at about 12:30. I think she's starting to drop her nap, because some days she just plays in her room for an hour or so, but I'm okay with that, so long as she's relaxing a bit.
She actually had a double ear infection a few weeks ago, and we just went back to the ped this week to see if it had cleared up and it was all gone. She is getting her 2 year molars, but I've been giving her motrin when she complains about the pain, so I don't know if that's it. If it's just pain, I would think that the sleeping with us would be enough to calm her down.
