21 month old fighting naps and bedtime
I am getting desperate. My 21 month old and I have been cosleeping since she was 6 weeks old. We did contact naps up until she was 19months. She has never been a great sleeper. Never napped alone because she would wake immediately, always needed mama in bed which was great I never had an issue with it. When she was under a year old she would only go to sleep if bounced in my arms which usually only took 10 minutes or so. We stopped the bouncing at 12 months and have successfully gotten her to sleep and transitioned to the bed with no fight for about 2 months. We usually rock her to sleep in the chair and then put her to bed. She started to fight it at night so I would just go lay with her until she fell asleep. Well that just turned into play time in the bed and she would run back and forth for almost an hour and then finally fall asleep. She finally started falling asleep while rocking again and all was well. The last week or so she has been screaming until she throws up at bed time unless I stand up and bounce/sway her. This sometimes takes 15 minutes but usually only 5. I try so hard not to give in because I don't want her to rely on it but it has been so hard when she fights me for so long and bouncing gets her to sleep quickly. The last 3 days she began doing this at nap time too. Today nap time took 45 minutes. I don't know what to do. I am getting so frustrated and we just found out I am pregnant with baby number two. I know this is partially a sleep regression but it has been going on for almost two weeks and I am losing my mind.
I have been told "maybe she isn't tired enough" but I know she is because she will immediately start to fall asleep when I stand up and she is so grumpy. She also has insanely long wake windows in the evening and no matter how hard I try to shorten them I can't. She will refuse to sleep.
Currently our schedule it wake at 7:30 nap 11:30-1:30 (sometimes 12-1:30) and then she she stays up until 8:30-9. I cannot let her sleep past 1:30 or she will be up until 11pm. I have tried every nap time, waking up earlier, everything. I just don't know what to do and everything online I've read is about parents who have their toddlers in cribs and they lay next to them or just let the toddler run in the crib until they fall asleep but my daughter is not in a crib because we cosleep with a side car so nothing I've read applies to us. Hoping someone here has gone through something similar and can give me some advice.
Posted Dec 4, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC