Bedtime screaming and clingyness, help!

Have you considered or tried a floor bed or does your cot turn into a toddler bed at all?

My friend had this with her May 23 toddler and he actually just wanted the independence of his toddler bed.

Worth trying even if it’s the cot mattress on the floor?

Edited to add: of course worth making sure the room is toddler proofed before you do this - large furniture secured to the wall, wires safely tucked away etc.

Does he maybe need a later bedtime? Maybe he's not tired enough.

Your little one will be more clingy due to you being pregnant. Which is developmentally normal but obviously very difficult.
Is there a reason he's in the cot, would a floor bed where you or your husband can lay with him be helpful? (This works really for us).

Regarding your husband being unable to do bedtime, I know this sounds hard and I don't mean it that way. But with a baby on the way, he has to. And your little one will have to accept this.
My little one can be the same, she'll cry for me. Also when she wakes up in the night. But I'm 5 months pregnant and I'm very aware that when the baby is here I can not attend 2 children throughout the night it will physically and mentally break me. So my husband is doing more night wake ups, which is very hard because we me she goes back asleep within 5 min and all I do is lay in bed with her. My husband on the other hand got hit in the face the other day as she wanted mummy.

It was hard for everyone involved. Me hearing her cry for me. For him as she just wanted me and made that very clear. And for her because she was so upset.
But as I said with my husband, it would be unfair to wait until the baby is here and make her feel I don't have time for her or she's replaced. Therefore she has to get used to either one of us doing it.
At the moment, I'm still doing the majority but I also still have over 4 months to go.

It's a really hard situation, and I hope you get it sorted xx

I’ve got a 6 month old and my May 23 baby and had a similar situation to you/Daphne where I always used to put my toddler to bed and she never wanted daddy to do it but I knew we had to sort it out before baby arrived as doing both yourself would be so, so hard. So we gradually introduced my husband doing it but I had a limit of how long I’d let her cry (started off as 5 as my threshold was low looool) and then increased it to like 15 mins but she did get used to it eventually. I also think a floor bed might help, we’ve had one since 8 months so didn’t transition recently but if he wants holding and cuddling it might be a good solution. I’m not sure what your bedtime routine looks like but you could start off by you doing bath/book, PJs etc and then your husband takes over and as he gets more comfortable with daddy, he can take over more of the whole routine.

Have you tried doing bedtime together occasionally? You and hubby? My son went through a similar phase not too long ago and this seemed to massively help if we both sat and read him a story and sang some songs. Also something that helped us massively was my son already being in the cot before we do bedtime songs/stories. So he's already settled in his cot before I leave the room, rather than putting him in and leaving straight away. He also has an iggle piggle toy that plays music so he plays with that while he's falling asleep then I take it out once he's asleep x

Hello all, thanks all so much for the advice. Me and hubby have just read it all and agree with all of you!
We have been considering a floor bed so that’s great that it seems to have good results with others. And we’ve done bedtime together a couple times but we will deffo be doing it more and more now.
I like the suggestion of him already being in the cot when we do stories and songs, and maybe we can get him a little toy to play with too. He’s got loads of stuffies in his cot but doesn’t seem to care too much about them.
Thanks all, I know we have to bite the bullet and make a change now!!