BabyWhispererForums.com
SLEEP => Sleeping For Toddlers => Topic started by: Gigismom on May 03, 2006, 08:51:50 am
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so it's 1:45 am and dh is driving gianna around in the car in the hopes she will finally go back to sleep cause she's been up since 11:30 or so.
i have always had the best sleeper....sleeping through the night at 3.5 months, VERY rarely making a peep til morning. but within the last couple of months, she has been awake more times during the night than i can even remember. we usually do pu/pd (well, a variation of it anyway) for a good 1.5-2 hours and if she isn't asleep by then or showing any signs that she will be sleeping soon, dh drives her around til she falls asleep. sometimes when she is awake she is just crying the whole time...other times she is smiling, laughing, asking for books or the doggie...
what is going on? her teeth are all through. she has no fever. she recently switched to one nap a day. i did this in part because i thought maybe the night wakings were due to too much day sleep. the first few days were pretty hellish, but then she started doing really well, going to bed without crying and no night wakings. but now here we are again...i'm on bw at an ungodly hour cause i can't sleep and dh is driving the car around in the middle of the night... :-\
sorry i feel like i am going to blow up this board with all my sleep related problems and topics i have posted lately....i usually just reply to posts, not start them!
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Hey, I hear ya!
My LO is doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same age. She actually IS cutting molars (which obviously has an impact) but often the waking doesn't seem pain related.
Sorry, no advice, but lots of sleep dust to you - and I hope someone else has some better ideas! ::)
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She may have gotten used to being driven around to get back to sleep when she wakes during the night. I would recommend not doing that any more.
I would do either toddler pd or walk out/walk in for every night waking until she is quiet or falls asleep and NOT take her driving. It may take a while the first few times (like hours) but if you don't drive her around or take her out of her crib, she'll come to understand that night time is for sleeping, not driving around.
And its okay that your posting problems! That's what we're here for! Anything we can do to help, we will.
Good luck!
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well she didn't fall asleep in the car last night. so she was semi awake crying onand off from 10-11:30, then WIIIIIIIIDE awake from 11:30-3:30 when she finally fell asleep in her crib with me standing next to her patting her tummy. whenever i walked out of the room, she went ballistic. but as long as she could see me and i stood by her crib, she was ok just laying there. so i am thinking it muct be separation anxiety.........right?? good lord the kid is with me allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll day, how much more of my time does she need?! lol.
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sophie...do you mind giving me more info about ellie's wakings?
how many nights a week does this happen? how long is she awake during the night? what is she doing...i.e. crying, playing, etc? what do you do in response? do you then let her sleep in in the mornings? how many naps a day does she take an how long? does she seem to wake at a certain time each night? for gianna the restlessness and crying out starts at 10 or so...if we make it past 10-11 without her waking, then she will typically stay asleep for the whole night. but if she does start waking around then, it is a downward spiral from there.
sorry for the interrogation. it just seems like a lot of kids this age are doing this and i am trying to put together the puzzle pieces and find the cure!
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When Margot switched to one nap we had frequent night wakings too and they were for a couple of hours as well. what helped--super early bedtime and a slightly later naptime. I figured out that Margot was very sensitive to having a long period awake between naptime wakeup and bedtime so that she would wake at night from overtiredness if that period was too long, regardless of the total sleeptime during the day and night. She had to be asleep no more than 5 hours after wakeup so we calculated backwards ie if bedtime was 7:00 and her typical nap was 1.5 hours then naptime would be 12:30 regardless of whether there was an early wakeup (which there usually was--5:30 ::)) So maybe try a combination of later nap/earlier bedtime--you don't want to push to nap back a huge amount because you risk her being overtired and not having a good nap, and see if that helps. That's what worked for us. Good luck!
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imsmum
thanks for the info. what would margot do when she woke up at night? was she crying or trying to play wtih you?
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Lindsey I don't have time to write a proper response right now but will later. Just wanted to say we went through this for a month and a half at least and it just STOPPED. Literally 3 nights ago. (knock on wood) We were sleeping on the floor in her room for the first two weeks and in and out every half an hour for the rest of the time. Hang in there!!! you're so not alone. I will write more later.
hugs
Sharon
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Lindsey--She would cry briefly, then babble away, then after about an hour would go quiet seem to drift off but then cry awake again until she finally fell asleep from exhaustion 2 to 3 hours later. When she was at her peak of overtiredness I would go in her room and stand with my hand on her chest not talking to her to let her know that it was sleep time and to help her settle when she seemed to drift off around the 1 hour mark because I realized that she could go to sleep then but was having trouble during her"stage 3" sleep and my hand on her really helped. I did that for a few nights to help her catch up on her sleep. Then I started goiing in just putting my hand on her and laying on the floor, then going in and briefly put my hand on her chest and leaving to not going in.
Oh, one other thing I found with the 10 pm wakeup(which usually coincides with the time they transition from their deep sleep at the beginning of the night to the lighter sleep which lasts until just before morning) is that if I nipped in there right away and put my hand on her, Margot would settle within 5 minutes. That way we were able to reduce the night wakings down to one really.
Now if she wakes which she does occasionally (like last night) she just babbles away to herself. We don't go in although it still takes her 2 hours to go to sleep because she is not upset and because she is sleeping fairly well now(knock on wood) so she makes up for short sleep with her nap and an earlier bedtime the next night.
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thanks imsmum!
sharon, i'd love to hear your story as well if you get the time. it is really hard dealing with her being overtired and me being overtired plus her extreme clingyness and whining during the day....but actually this is not what really worries me. i know that it will end at some point, i just want to make sure that i am responding to the waking properly and not in a way that will make it continue. i'm interested in everyone's suggestions!!
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I know you said she has her canine teeth, but could it be possible she's already starting on the two year molars if she's such an early teether? Just a thought.
Don't know how much help I'll be as for us it started as seperation anxiety, then teething, then the flu then dh went out of town again which kicked in the seperation anxiety again. (those canine teeth were super tough for her too!) At any rate here's our story. We went to one nap around 13 months and it's been on again off again but generally pretty good. Solid night sleep but only 1hour, 1 hour 20 min nap. When the problems started it started with her not wanting to go to sleep. Usually she chats to herself for awhile then drifts off. But she started screaming and crying at bedtime. This would continue for a couple of hours. We would do a combinatin of just saying goodnight, it's time for sleep now, etc. Putting a hand on her, and walk in walk out. All depending on what would settle her, even briefly. If she was awake but happy we didn't go in. Even if she was jumping up and down. ::) She would then sleep for a couple of hours and wake again. That's when the fun began. We started with walk in/out, etc. but it got to the point where she would scream if you weren't holding her. We would hold her until calm and we finally dragged a mattress into the room and would sleep on the floor. She would then still cry out in her sleep but we could settle her with our voice and/or a hand on her. After a few weeks we didn't need to sleep in her room anymore but we were still having to go in every half hour to an hour to soothe her. We kept awake time as consistent as possible but some days we were up by 5. If that was the case I would bump up the nap time but I'd try and keep her awake as long as possible. We kept bedtime consistent too. And then, as I said, three days ago it just stopped! Not only has it stopped, but her nap has finally become longer. 2-2 1/2 hours. She is in bed by 8 and up at 8. (give or take 20 min) Nap time we found is best after only 4 hours of awake time. So she's in bed by 12, 12:15.
She has also been very very clingy and whiny with me during the day, just the same as Gianna. I don't know if any of this will help you but staying consistent seems to have worked for us even if it did take a LONG time and I thought I would have a nervous breakdown more than once!
BIg hugs to you and let me know if there's anything you think I can help with. I hope it helps just to know you are not alone.
Sharon
Sharon
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I hope it helps just to know you are not alone.
yes it definitely does help to know that there is not something wrong with gianna...even though i am sorry the rest of you are dealing with this as well. :P i think the other babies on my birth club thread are also all doing bedtime stalling/battling or night waking, so it must be developmental i guess.
thanks for the suggestions and i hope your lo's continue to improve in their sleeping!