I have a textbook/angel baby. He is almost 20 months and has been sleeping through the night for several weeks now. (I know, I gave him nighttime bottles for too long but after one rough night that issue has been fixed.) I am very grateful that he needs his sleep as much as his Mommy does. His routine is:
7:30-8 wakeup
8:30 breakfast
12:00 lunch
1:00 nap
3-4 wakeup (I let him sleep until he wakes up, I keep expecting him to transition to a shorter nap)
5:30-6 dinner
7:00 start bedtime routine (bath, story in Mommy's lap, song)
7:45-8 bed
He has always gone to sleep very easily. Normally I just put him down with his stuffed lion and pacificer, walk out of the room, and he goes to sleep. Then about three nights ago he started getting back up. Either he would "sleep/rest" for about 10-20 minutes and then get up or it would happen almost immediately after I leave. It will take my husband and me another hour or so to get him calmed down to sleep. The thing I don't understand is that when I read to him he is yawning and rubbing his eyes and when I am putting him down he is laying his head on my shoulder. He is tired! When he gets upset, we go in to try and calm him and he starts jumping up and down with excitement. If we leave he gets upset. The thing we have just found tonight that seems to work best is reading him a story when he is in his crib and using the nightlight to read by. My husband did it and then left but he got upset. Then I attempted it with a second story and finished with his nighttime song. I then took a few minutes to just stand there to be sure he wasn't going to get upset and then I left. Of course he may have just been too exhausted to keep it up.
Whatever the problem it seems to have effected his naptime too. Normally he sleeps for two to three hours but the last few days he has only sleep on average an hour and a half. Normally about that time he stirs and then goes back to sleep waking with a smile and bouncing all over the place. Now he starts crying. At first we thought it might be teething (we still have three incisors and his two year molars to go) but when he teeths we give him Tylenol a half hour before bed and it seems to take care of the problem. Now it doesn't seem to do anything. We even took him to the doctor to have his ears checked out and she couldn't find anything wrong with him.
I am also four month pregnant. As I get farther along I'm not able to hold my 30lb little boy as much as I used to. I also wonder if this disconnect might be making matters worse.
I am just not sure what is wrong or what to do about it. I keep hoping it will go away on its own but we are becoming quite convinced he is scared of sleep despite a year and a half of no problems. Any suggestions or guidence would be much appreciated.
Amy
