sleep help with McKayla.

I am having huge issues with sleeping time with McKayla. She will go to bed (ours at the moment) totally fine. Fall asleep but 45 minutes later she is having huge nightmares. Hitting her head against the headboard and screaming for me. No matter what we try this can continue for a while. Rescue Remedy is not working and Panadol doesnt calm her down at all.

We literally have to just hold her (as much as we can) and take her out to the lounge and watch her so she doesnt hurt herself. When she finally wakes she is tearful and totally out of it. If you ask her what is happening she just starts crying again so we have no idea.

We did try to do sleep training about 2 weeks ago with her going of to her own bed and sleeping there from the beginning and that ended in disaster. We tried 3 nights. First night she was asleep fine after about 2 hours with me talking to her from the door. The second night she screamed and cried so much that she was vommitting so once she was asleep in my arms I put her down. Third night she went off again and not wanting to go to sleep.

Since birth she would only go to bed at 10 and woke up at 5. Lately I can get her down by 8. I just wonder if all the unsettling with moving have something to do. At 7 weeks we moved and trouble started. She use to go down and self settle. But when we moved she would scream and scream and only calm down in our bed. Move her back at 3 to 3-half months at 4 and a half months I land up in hospital and was away for 3 nights. Same thing happening with screaming. (she would be looking fast asleep but everyone said it cant be night terrors at that age).

So back in our bed. Move over here and she would go to sleep on a sleeper couch in the lounge and then move her to the one next to our bed.

After a while we could put her down in her own bedroom and if she did wake up she would join us no problem.

So is all of this because of the sleep training we tried? Where to from here? I feel like just because of outside pressure that I forced her to do smething before she was ready to do it and that I failed her. The more I parent this child the more I realise she is totally different from the norm of kids. I really feel like such a failure tonight. She hit her head 8 times really hard and didnt even seem to notice.

I am at the point of perhaps going to a dr. but have no idea if they will be able to help.

This child use to nap for 15 min each twice a day as a baby and worked herself up to 30 minutes to a max of an hour at 18 months and since about 5 months ago will rarely nap. She just doesnt seem to need as much sleep. We have tried trust me. We use the mozart for minors cd as a sleep cue.

If we dont try to gently wake her she literally kicks and hit herself so badly. tonight was the worst. She literally looked like she was possessed. I was sitting for quite a while just trying to prevent her not hurting herself but she just got worse and worse and worse. I really feel like I have failed her so badly. I just wish I can see into that head of hers.

Best is we moved her bedtime earlier. She went down at 7:30 and was down in 15 minutes.

Well done you for going so long - can I ask how you weaned her? I'm contemplating starting this process. PM me if you have any advice

Rock? Tried that this child was literally kicking me so hard that I almost started crying.

She literally has bruises on her body today. When we asked her today if she remembers anything she just said Mommy dont leave me. I really think she is still having issues with the moving countries ect. She still sometimes freaks if we get a suitcase out and ask me if we are going away. We have to explain quite a while beforehand that we are just going on holiday for a few days but we will come back. (last few times she was totally fine with it and didnt react).

I just think perhaps us trying to seperate from her at sleep time brought up a lot of stuff, perhaps even stuff she doesnt really understand. So going to go at her pace and just turn death ear at all the other people around us telling us that she is suppose to go off to her own bed and stay there ect.

So far she has proven that she will do stuff at her own pace with everything in life.