I’ve created a monster (well… two)
S and I haven’t had an un-intertupted night’s sleep since S2 was born. Longer for me if you count all the months I woke up to pee when pregnant. Yes that goes with the territory of having an infant.
But what sux more is that we’re getting hit on two ends: both boys WON’T go down on their own, AND one of them still wakes up twice at night. Ultimately this produces two tired adults, the lucky one of which that puts G down gets nothing accomplished.
For the most part (night waking excluded) we’ve brought this on ourselves.
The story of G
G falls asleep at 10. That’s right. 10. We’ve tried putting him to bed earlier, but that results in him being in his room for the duration, still awake, still talking to you. We’ve tried killing his mid-day nap, which at our last (and only) attempt, resulted in one pissy toddler. There we made the decision that it was better to have a kid that goes to bed late, than one that screams and throws things at you for hours on end. Translation: the no-nap option was even more exhausting than the late-bird option.
If you recall, the day before S2 and I were discharged from the hospital, G got sick and raised a fever of 102+ degrees, which hung on for a few days. We battled this by S dedicating himself solely to G, and me to S2. S slept in G’s room, which was enough to get G to ask that he ‘snuggle wich youuuu’ (I don’t do justice how cute he says it) each night. I remember there was a time, when as a baby I would put g in his crib down for the night, walk out, and he’d fall asleep. Man that was ages ago!
The story of S2
Really, same story, second verse. Snuggle, rock, put down asleep. Tiptoe out door with fear of little monster waking up because you’d have to spend another 30 min for each put-down iteration.
Summary
It sucks! Sleep training for all is on our horizon. I told myself I’d wait until both kids get to their birthday. Actually, longer because we have two trips planned and I don’t necessarily want to redo everything we do now based on room stay accommodations.
I am NOT looking forward to this. I am hopeful, though, that at least if S2 figures out a way to fall asleep on his own at night, it will translate to him putting himself back to sleep if he wakes up in the middle of the night too.
For G, I don’t know how we’ll do this. He screams whenever we try to leave the room now. Sure I can close his gate, but then he’ll think he’s in time out and I’m worried he’ll grow to despise bedtime even more. If you have experience sleep training an older child, I’m all ears.
So yeah. This is my messed-up-sleep house. Signed,
At fault.
So when you put G down for the night, does he actually go to sleep, or does he need you in there until he falls asleep? When he’s asleep, does he wake up again?
When G falls asleep, he’s asleep through the night. Rarely he’ll wake-up in the middle of the night and then waddle over in our room. With him it’s just getting him down that is hard. With S2 it’s getting down and being up a couple of times mid-night.
With sleep training older kids, I think maybe you need to change the way you think about it. He likes the way it is now, of course he does, he has the undivided attention of one of his favorite people for as long as he can manage to stay awake, but it’s not working for you. He’s old enough to understand when you tell him that the rules are changing and he needs to go to sleep in whatever way you decide to do it. He’ll be mad, he’ll let you know about it, but I really doubt that he’ll be scared with you coming and reassuring him every 10-15 mins saying “it’s time for you to go to sleep” And he won’t hate bedtime as long as the routine is still all stuff he really likes (ours is brush teeth, read 3 books, snuggle for 5 mins, goodnight), and the parent doing the bedtime routine might be much more attentive during all that without the dread of “oh geez, how long is this going to take” (I speak from experience..)
Good luck, and however you choose to do it, my experience has been that it’s never as bad as you’ve built it up in your mind that it will be. I put it off for so long with James until I was totally miserable, but then it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be… And with Heidi, who was about S2’s age when we did it, we never regretted it. I would wait until you have at least 2 weeks to 1 month without trips or house guests though.
It was great to see you =)
I liked the “No-Cry Sleep Solution” even though not all of it worked, it gave me a lot of things to try. And some of it took time. And, well, each boy is different and learned to sleep well at different ages. Xander was a great sleeper after about the age of 2. Jaden… he’s only able NOW to sleep well!
I had typed out a long response to this about a week ago, it must not have gone through… I’ve got lots of opinions on this, and lots of sympathy, but one thing that always surprised me was that making changes in their sleep was never as hard/painful as I’d built up that it would be in my mind while putting it off for whatever reason that seemed totally justified at the time. I hope G surprises you too. He’s got it pretty good right now, he’s got the undivided attention of one of his favorite people for as long as he can manage to stay awake, so he won’t be happy about giving it up, but he’s old enough to understand a really simplified version of why it isn’t working for you guys… I’m always telling Heidi that I can’t snuggle anymore because I have to do xyz and then go to bed myself and I’m sooooo tired…