While infant sleep is relatively easy, not that many sleep consultants are confident enough to work with older toddlers.
As a mum and a sleep consultant I have very big insight into what causes toddlers to struggle with sleep and their stress levels play a big role. This is also the main reason toddles have tantrums.
On top of having tantrums our daughters safety was a big priority once she started walking. I was struggling to find a safe toddler sleeping bag as none of them had feet. Which meant she could easily fall over, especially mid tantrum. This is why I have designed our safe toddler sleeping bags with feet and anti-slip soles.
Our Story
Let me give you a big of a background of what our sleep journey with Sophie (our firstborn) looked like and hopefully it can help you make your life a bit easier.
Sophie was a pretty bad sleeper from a very young age and by the age of 18 months old her longest sleep stretch was probably around 2 hours max. On top of that she was up almost every night for a period of 4 hours (split nights), when we’d be trying everything to help her settle but nothing would work.
Then at 18 months I’ve given up and decided to give our 3rd sleep consultant a chance at helping us “fix” Sophie’s sleep and (miracle!) it worked…
For about 9-12 months, until we had our son and her sleep went back to her usual pattern of being up all night (from midnight until 5am). Some days she’d be happy just to chat and play in her cot, some days she’d call for us and then will keep on playing on her own for the other 3 hours.
We were absolutely exhausted, while trying to look after our son and managing Sophie’s sleep an obvious high stress levels.
After a long struggle of 6 months we did end up getting a referral for an ASD assessment (autism spectrum disorder).
I don’t think that this is the only reason toddlers can struggle with sleep, but I did learn that it can be quite typical for a toddler to have high anxiety levels which would then have further influence on their night sleep.
We had to use multiple tools to help her reduce her stress levels, and once again it worked. Looking back at it, I think it probably required more work from my husband and I than Sophie herself.
5 Tips
Bonus Tip
I hope it will help you to make your bedtime routine much more manageable. And for the most comfortable toddler sleeping bag with feet you hop our Sleeping Suits now
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