well here is another sleepless little one in here in toronto.  i met laura and she mentioned to me that she had a 1 year old, sadie, whom was definitely sleepless!  i offered to help her and through our email communications and laura's dedication and hard work, sadie is sleeping all night, every night! so to begin laura answered all the necessary questions so that i could give her proper advice for her situation.  laura was very honest in her answers, as that is a key component to getting what you need out of this.  i am not here to judge anything or anyone, i am only here to help.  that being said, sadie was sleeping in her crib, but fighting bedtime with tantrums, etc until 11:00 pm.  they also were starting bedtime routines around 8 or 9 pm and were doing bath every few nights, and doing part of the bedtime routine such as bottle and books in laura's room and then moving back to sadie's room to put her down.  sadie also wanted many stuffed animals in her bed with her and sometimes laura was placing the ipad in on a soothing screen to try and calm sadie down.  sadie was waking in the night and was occasionally being fed and other times laura was just soothing her back to sleep.  she also wasn't napping properly and laura could tell that sadie was completely over tired.  laura knew her little one wasn't acting properly due to her lack of sleep.  she needed and wanted help immediately! i suggested to laura that she change a few things to try and get sadie in the right track.  i suggested to her that she do the entire bedtime routine in sadie's room to help decrease any extra excitement or stimulation.  i also helped her 'set the stage' for bedtime.  sadie's room should be very dark and calm.  no toys in the crib, but one item to sleep with is okay if that helps to soothe sadie.  also i suggested a noise maker to help her sleep.  i told her to take the ipad out as in theory i could see where she was going with it, but the light and screen is simply too stimulating.  i also recommended her bathing sadie every night as it is very soothing and is a great cue to sadie that night time sleep is on the way.  i suggested to start bedtime routine earlier and to get her to bed before she was so over tired.  that is part of the reason she is battling with her until 11 pm.  it makes it very hard for little ones to soothe themselves to sleep once they reach this over tired state.  i gave laura some nap and bedtime sleep training routines and processes to follow to try and get sadie to self-soothe and go to sleep unassisted.  stay tuned for the follow up to sadie's sleepless nights and see how she finally catches her zzz's!