Seeking advice or help from moms with a similar situation.

My daughter is approaching her first birthday and we are having some bedtime behavioral trouble. It now takes us up to 2 hours to wind her down to sleep whereas it used to be 30 min. During this time she gets kind of... violent.

I am searching for another word, but can't seem to find one. But she'll be laying there as her sweet self, trying to fall asleep and then she'll start hurting herself. Since about 4 months, she would hit herself in the head with her hand or pull out her hair when she was soothing. I had read it's a normal thing but that's as far as I got with finding literature about non-toddlers. Months later, now she aggressively claws/scratches her face, pokes and pushes in her eyeballs with her finger, grabs at her eyelids and pulls out her eyelashes, and pushes at her nose so hard it pops. She'll even look up at me at times and slap or claw me in the face, or bite my shirt.

If I try to discourage this behavior by moving her hand away from herself or softly holding it down, she of course stirs harder, awakens more and just continues. If I let her be, then she sits there and does these things over and over, marking her face, removing eyelashes, or making her eyes and nose red.

I don't know what to make of this. It's really starting to bother me and it wasn't a sudden thing; it's been building up and she adds a new trick to her book every so often. I don't want it to get worse, but don't know what to do to stop it. She sleeps fine through the night once asleep. If she wakes at all at night, she falls right back asleep.

It's tough to watch. And we did sleep training with CIO out at 7 months, which worked in 3 nights, and she did great going to bed until this last recent sleep regression. But CIO isn't working this time with her hitting that second round of severe separation anxiety that they get again at this age.

😞😞😞😞😞😞😞

Please, has anyone had this with their kiddo? Does it end? Does it get worse? Are we doing something to make this happen?

We were going to bring it up at her 1yo exam next month, but I doesn't hurt to seek help where we can before then. And other than this current problem, she's absolutely a charming, smiling, happy little girl.

TIA.