Sleeping and scratching

Last week i had bad nights with Eliza when she stirs from her sleep at 1-2am. On 2 occasions, she woke up and took a long time to settle. And somehow, i decided to be more firm on bedtimes and the way i put her to bed.

Is it sleep training? I'm not sure, i tried not patting her to sleep and letting her zz on her own, with me in the room. Actually i was quite fed up with her scratching like mad when she's not feeling itchy (at least that's what i think since she could go on scratching the bed). And bending over her cot to help her scratch/rub and pat her to sleep is really quite difficult since the cot is lower. So i told her that she needed to just fall asleep on her own. It was quite a struggle on the first two days but she somehow slept quite well through the night and was still in her cot the next morning (usually she'll wake up in the middle of the night and me in my super duper sleepy state will just carry her over to sleep with us cos i'll barely wake up if i do that).
The next two nights was about the same just that she took longer and longer to fall asleep....like 1.5hrs!! it drove me nuts....cos i wanted to get out of the room already.

I also switched off the bathroom lights which i usually kept on so i can see her and so that i can go brush teeth, take out contacts etc after she sleeps. This is one thing i should have done long time ago...it kinda helped, i feel.

I'm still trying to adjust the putting her to bed part. Some parents can easily leave their toddlers in the bed/cot and let them fall asleep on their own...oh so nice. But i couldn't put myself to let Eliza cry so no choice. Somehow even when trying to inch further away from Eliza while getting her to sleep, she'll always ask for more hugs & kisses. And when i do hug her she'll really hug me back and sometime pat pat me on my back....which is kinda odd but really sweet and cute.