Help we are slowly going insane

[Mia and Lily's Mom]

Hi everybody,

With all of your help I successfully did WIWO with dd#2 in early September.  She took to it like a charm, started going to sleep on her own and sleeping through the night which she hadn't done at all yet.  Well this lasted for about 2 month and now we seem to be worse off than we were before.

She is still going to bed easily, putting herself to sleep but she will wake up at least once or twice a night and will immediatly sit up and scream like she is mad and will not stop screaming until you pick her up.  You can come in and stand next to the bed and tell her night night and she will not stop screaming at the top of her lungs until you pick her up.  Then she really wants you to take her to your bed and she will sleep there the rest of the night. 
OK, so if that was not bad enough, over the last week on top of waking up around midnight or 2:00 am we are also waking up hyper which means that even if we bring her into our bed, she will toss and turn, clap, talk and play with my hair for hours before going back to sleep.

Last night was the worste in a while.  We had decided that we were not going to take her out of her crib but to just tough it out and do WIWO again.  Well she woke up at 11:00 pm and between dh and I cried about 1.5 hours straight.  Then she started to settle but was just too restless, she would just roll around in the crib and wanted to play with my hand.  I actually fell asleep in the chair next to her only to wake up at 2:00 am and she was still playing with my hands and talking to me.  I was soo exhausted at that point that I picked her up and took her to our bed where she proceeded to play and talk until about 3:00 am at which point both dh and I were ready to just pass out cold but she was still going strong.  So I took her back to her room, put her in the crib, turned a low light on, gave her some toys and books and told her to just entertain herseld, which she did for about 45 minutes, then she stated crying, I went back in and got her and she finally went to sleep in our bed around 4:00 am :-(.  She slept until almost 9:00 am and was up and about immediately, like a little dynamo.

Sorry this is so long but I don't know what to do.  She had a cold a week ago but even with cold medicine that would knock out my older daughter, she would wake up and stay awake for a while.  I just don't know what to do at this point.  We had her checked a couple of times thinking she had an ear infection but there seems to be nothing physically wrong with her (that they can easily assertain though). 

So, any suggestions.  Any ideas where this restless hyperness is coming from at the middle of the night?  We are so sleep deprived we can barely see straight at this point.

Thanks for reading this saga and bless you for any suggestions on how to help solve this.

Chris

[aidenmc]

My first thoughts would be that she is reacting to the cold medicine (it knocked out my older son, not my younger on) and getting hyper, she has teeth moving and that is making her wakeful and irritable, and then because of poor sleep she has gotten into the overtired spiral. I have been dealing with some of this myself. I would try Tylenol (regular, not cold), and earlier to bed (i.e. try one hour earlier) and see if that makes her more restful. I am sure you will get some other ideas soon!

Becky

[Mia and Lily's Mom]

Becky,

Thanks for the response.  You know, now that you mention it, maybe she is getting overtired.  I know she must be exhausted after screaming straight for 1.5 hours, but short of picking her up and bringing her to our bed as soon as she starts crying, how can we keep her from getting overtired when she goes into her crying spill.
Now if I look at her routine and reading some of the other posts, I am wondering if she is maybe going to bed too late.  Here is her "normal routine"

7:00 am awake
8:00 am Breakfast
11:30 Lunch
12:00 pm nap for ~ 2 hours
2:00 pm awake
3:00 pm snack
6:30 pm dinner
7:30 - 8:30 pm bath and bedroutine
usually asleep between 8:30 and 9:00 pm

She then usually wakes up around midnight, latest at 2:00 am.

Ao maybe I should try to move bedtime closer to 7:30 - 8:00 pm.  Can't actually give her Tylenol, that definitely makes her super hyper for some reason 

Any other ideas?

[aidenmc]

It does look to me as though her bedtime is a little late. I would aim for 7:30 (or earlier if she is currently overtired) and see what happens. My lo regularly is asleep by 7 (although he is up usually at 5-5:30) after a naop that ends at about 3 (when thinks are not wonky as they happen to be right now). I heard somewhere that there should be no more than 5 hrs between nap and bedtime. Funny about the Tylenol. Have you tried Motrin? I have stopped using that as it is hard on lo's stomach. I can see Tylenol cold being a problem but had never heard that about Tylenol. Almost doesn't seem worth it to medicate them for anything does it?

[Lucysmom]

Hi - Just wanted to also say I had a similar experience with cold meds and my dd.  She was actually full on running laps in her crib for HOURS ON END.  I wanted to kill myself.  So, needless to say, no more cold meds EVER AGAIN!!!

Hope things get better soon and that you can get back to doing WIWO when she is feeling better.

[mari]

I would suggest putting her to bed not longer than 5 hours after waking for her nap.

[Mia and Lily's Mom]

OK, just a quick update.  We have moved dd's bedtime to between 7:30 and 8:00 and she seem to be doing better with that.  She puts herself to sleep great, going in crib awake (same for naps) but then she wakes up every night now between 2 and 3 am and will not stop screaming bloody murder until you pick her up out of the crib.  Even if you take her back into our bed (I know bad parents, but a little too much too drink on Saturday night at a cocktail party and no stamina for WIWO  ), it will still take her at least an hour to get back to sleep just tossing and turning, playing with my hair and rolling around.  I just don't know why she is so restless/ fidgety in the middle of the night.  The worst part is that the longer she is awake (when you do try WIWO, the worse that gets so that on Thursday night, it took her almost 4 hours to go back to sleep  ), so realistically the goal now is to get her as soon as she wakes up because at least then you have a chance to get her back to sleep (even if it is in your bed) with the hour  .  This has got to stop, we are soo sleep deprived we cannot think straight, and on top of that we are leaving for our X-mas trip to Germany in two weeks and we only have a full size bed over there so there is no way she can sleep with us.
Could it be seperation anxiety, because she will literally sleep on top of me if allowed or right on me all night.
Thanks

[andibig]

Hmm it could be the cold medicine .generally we never give DD a cold medicine when she has a cold but just calpol which is a general med containing paracetamol. if your LO is teething the cold meds are only going to treat the cold and not the teething IYKWIM.
we are currently going through a spate of night wakings as well as DD is teething (16 teeth so yes its 2nd year molars and yes i've seen it trying to cut through).. we did the putting her in the bed as well until she expected it all the time.
me and dh had to agree that she was not coming in the bed (as long as we were confident she wasn't in pain etc) and just continuosly say "lie down and go to sleep" until she did. if your LO is coming into your bed all the time thats what she will expect.something you could try is sleeping in HER room.
we did this with DD so that we could catch her in time b4 her crying escalated.
HTH

[Mia and Lily's Mom]

Ok, we cheated again last night (I had an early flight out and wasn't up to the challenge, and I am flying back late tonight so I have a feeling will be exhausted again - I know excuses, excuses :-))  So I will try to tackle this again tomorrow night.
If she wakes up at night and I attempt to do WI/WO she will just continue screaming while I am in the room with her, I have just been going in there, telling he to lay down (or actually laying her down) and then leaving again, but she is still screaming.  Do I need to pick her up and calm her down?  Of course she starts up again as soon as I put her back in so I am not sure that is the answer either.  And what about the fidgeting?  The one night I did finally get her to calm down she then proceeded to lay in her bed rolling around and playing with me hands for almost 2 hours?   Maybe sleeping on her floor would work, I hadn't thought of that.
Oh I can't believe this is so hard, dd#1 was so easy in comparison :-)

[andibig]

don't worry about the excuses LOL not sure i would be up to the challenge either.
WI/WO didn't work with Sasha either what we did with her is sleep in her room.so when it was OUR bedtime one of us would go in and sleep in the spare bed. when she woke cos i couldn't always catch her b4 she woke i would see if she would settle on her own if the crying was escalating i would pick her up,quick cuddle back in cot. of course the minute she was back in the cot she'd start crying. once i knew she was only wanting to come into bed with me i would put her in the cot and let her cry (it wasn't a cry of pain or anything) and she would soon lie down and go back to sleep.
Its sending a clear message that yes i'm here but its sleep time and your cot is where you sleep.
HTH

[Mia and Lily's Mom]

OK another really bad night, she woke up at 1:30 am and I brought her to our bed where she proceeded to roll around and play with my hair until 4:00 am.  The only way I finally got her to settle is to put her back in her crib and let her cry for a few minutes so she was exhausted and then passed out on top of me  . 
I feel that we are in the vicious cycle that we cannot get out of.  She doesn't sleep at night so we are always exhausted and too tired to deal with the sleep training but then she doesn't sleep again and we get more and more exhausted and we can never ever get anywhere.  Just shoot me now and put me out of my misery 
I think I will "call in sick" to the office tomorrow and take the kids to daycare anyway and just go home and sleep so that I can be caught up and ready for the night and try to tackle this, I just don't know what else to do and I know I am totally screwing her up now.

[aidenmc]

Oh dear! I think that is a good plan to get yourself some sleep. Have you thought about more of a gradual removal rather than WI/WO or taking her to your bed? Has she ever responded to any kind of patting or other forms of soothing in her crib? I suspect she really likes to be with you in your bed and now that she knows it is an option she will do what she can to get there. I wonder if you get enough rest today, you would feel up to doing some version of pu/pd with patting etc in the crib? If she is not sleeping in your bed anyway, it may be worth the effort to show her that she is going to stay in her room and mostly in her bed.

My 17 month old will respond to patting on his bum to get back to sleep (of course we have to wean him off that). PRior to that he would take nothing but a breastfeed. I don't suppose DH would be up for taking a night or two? It really helped us for DH to go in as he had nothing extrato offer ds but a pat and a hug. That gets boring after a while. I hate to say it because I would totally dread it but I think you may have to go through a night or two of teaching her that you are there but she has to stay in her room.

[andibig]

((((((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))))))))))
when Sasha was going through the really bad stage of night wakings i have to admit i took a couple of days off sick as i was dead on my feet .
i know what you mean about being so exhausted that the thought of doing sleep training really does not appeal.
If you can get DH to do a couple of nights so that you can get some well earned rest that may help. my DH was actually really good at settling DD cos she knew he would not pick her up etc.
but i have to say that i was ready to do the sleep training as i was fed up being woken 2 times a bloody night. .christ i was knackered and running on empty but i knew if i didn't tackle it then it would get a whole lot worse.

[Mia and Lily's Mom]

Well, I just went out to my car for lunch and slept in the backseat for about 1.5 hours  , so I actually feel a lot better (I have the markings of my jacket on my checks so I am trying to not look at anybody directly to avoid questions  ).  So having gotten some sleep today, I might be more apt to try to tackel this tonight.  I agree, it just has to be done and it is not getting any better with us bringing her to our bed, so if I am not going to sleep either way, I might as well do something hopefully useful with my time.
Dh has helped out and actually if she wakes in the early parts of the night he will always go in (he is the one putting her to bed at night so she settles better for him anyway).  He is really really bad at waking up at night and will loose his temper after a very short while (nothing violent or anything but he is ready to just let her CIO after about 15 minutes of trying), plus at night she will get really really mad if he attempts to get her, she will actually swat at him if he tries to pick her up  .  Well wish me luck, I will let you know tomorrow how it went and if it was really bad, I might still have to be "sick"
Thanks for all the hugs and encouragement, it really helps.

[andibig]

plus at night she will get really really mad if he attempts to get her, she will actually swat at him if he tries to pick her up  . 

LOL-sorry i know this probably wasn't meant to be funny but DD does that to DH sometimes.
Hope tonight goes well (although i know its going to be tough ).just keep saying to yourself "you will sleep through the night"
((((((((((((((((((((((mega sleep training hugs)))))))))))))))))))))))))
Andrea

[mari]

Alex does this to me even, she is so grumpy if I don't go straight to her, she gets a strop on and when I walk out she wants me back, then I go back and she swats me again.  We used to play this game for a few hours too!!!