Hello, I'm posting this in the desperate hope that someone may know someone who can help. We have just had our second child, a girl who is now 14 weeks old. My toddler, a boy, 2.5 years, is having an extreme reaction which is manifesting itself in severe separation anxiety at night. For two months he has begun resisting going to bed and waking up all night. Once I do get him to go down at bedtime he will then wake up several times and need resettling. On a good night he won't wake until 4am but then he will not go back to sleep. Every day now he is awake from 4 or 4.30am. My husband and I go in and resettle him (we never get him up) but he'll never go back to sleep. On a bad night he'll wake up hourly from midnight. I am then up with the baby a further two or three times (on a good night. On a bad night they wake each other up all night long). During the day my son's behaviour is also pretty challenging. He used to have quite a severe biting issue which has resurrected itself again. He is clearly functioning on so much cortisol from sleep deprivation that he is like a little wired ball of energy and/or aggression all day long. Resettling at night involves going in, either giving him a cuddle or laying him back down in his cot, telling him everything is OK and then leaving the room. Last night he wouldn't go back to sleep unless I was standing in his room. I am trying to avoid sleeping in his room or bringing him into our bed as I feel this would be a very difficult habit to break. Plus the baby is still our room-no doubt something my toddler knows and that contributes to the situation. My husband and I are in separate rooms while we try to tackle the night time relay but now we're both pretty much awake for either the baby or our son all night. We're at our wits' end and beyond exhausted. We're totally miserable and this is then feeding back into my little boy's anxiety so it's a vicious circle. We have a referral to Sunshine House in Peckham with a paediatrician but this isn't for another month. I should mention that while I do feel my son is at times genuinely distressed and needs reassurance there are times when he is definitely just delaying sleep and playing around. When he's like that I take a firmer approach and tell him to lie back down otherwise I'll shut the bedroom door. This was proving effective but not so much anymore. We have done all the usual things: seen the GP, the health visitor, consulted a sleep expert and a sleep trainer (the latter agreed with me that to have a stranger in the house overnight doing any kind of sleep training would be wrong while what he needs is his parents). We have the door open, the hall light on and I am making sure I spend time with him on my own in the day. He has a blackout blind, white noise machine etc... We also tried dropping his lunchtime nap but that didn't work and he definitely needs it now that he is awake so much at night. Very kind friends and family are stepping in when possible and my husband and I are trying to take on entire nights alone in order to allow the other one to get some sleep but more often than not we're all still awake anyway (our flat is an echo chamber so every noise is picked up). I do not know where to turn for help now and we need some as we cannot keep running on empty. Does anyone have an advice on people we could speak to to try to help? Thanks very much
