Baby Gate? Cot climber 22 months, wi/wo has worked before

[Chicki]

Hi there - this is a rambling post that jumps around a fair bit, i am sorry about that

I have found lots of help here before, my 22 month old boy Fox 6 months ago was waking from 2 - 5 hours every single night, using wi/wo we fixed him, getting him down to having a few night bottles a week instead of all night entertainment.

 a few months ago he started sleeping through, but then a couple of weeks ago my 3 yo dd taught him how to climb from his cot to the change table, down onto her bed and then onto the floor,  needless to say the n/ws began again and it takes forever to put him to bed.

Firstly he can safely climb from the cot to the floor (and vice versa) and secondly i have tried using a toddler bed a few times but before he is even covered with a rug he is wriggling to get out of it, so he is out of the toddler bed in half a second, it takes him at least ten to get out of the cot, so i would like to keep him there for a bit until he is a bit easier to reason with, although i am happy to give it a shot if general feeling is to move him, my husband prefers him in the cot too.  He appears to have a bit of a language delay (getting hearing tested next month and our paed is tracking this) so reasoning with him is going to be a bit of a problem.

The first few times he got out of bed he went back to sleep with us before i cottoned on to the fact that i was setting us up for a world of pain so he has to now stay in the cot when he cheerily trots in to say hi at 3am.  He used to have his bottle and then roll over and would quietly put himself to sleep, but now he can be awake for an hour and a half before going off to sleep at naptime and at night.  He will get out of bed numerous times, in the last 24 hours he has been sneaky and stayed quietly in the room playing until i see whats going on and put him back to bed. He does cry a bit at times so i do wi/wo but he tries to get out of bed all the while.

I am thinking of popping a baby gate across the door. My daughter and he share the room and she can sleep through some crying but not all, should i move her out for a few days? How do you use a baby gate? *ahem* I just had to go get him out of her bed and put him back into his, he has been in there for an hour and is very cheerful right now.

Do I have to stay out of sight of the baby gate? Do I go in there and put him back into bed? I am anti controlled crying but happy with wi/wo, actually crying doesn't affect him in the same way it did his sister, so a bit of controlled crying might not be such a bad thing. I am not sure how he would react, he seems to be a textbook baby. However last week he woke one morning at 3.30 and wouldn't go back to sleep so i put him down at 11am in the toddler bed and because he got out of bed so much i closed the door, he screamed a bit then went to sleep within 2 minutes, although he was very tired.  They sleep with their door open and a small amount of light coming from the bathroom so i am not keen to shut the door, i would have 2 basket cases on my hand.

Oh his routine is (or should be) about 11 hours sleep at night (7.30 or and about 2 hours sleep during the day at midday, he couldn't drop his nap, could i shorten it? he really loves a good nap.......

i would appreciate some hints on the finer points of using a baby gate for anyone who has done it, and am i crazy keeping him in his cot? he seems to need it, he would fall out of a bed, even with a guard rail because he moves about so much

Beck

DD Charlotte 15.3.04
DS Fox 4.3.06

[andibig]

Hi hun

I think I got the general idea that you need him to stay in the room .I assume that even if you move the changing table he will still be able to get out of the cot.

We do use a stair gate with DD.we tried wi/wo for weeks on end and with DH and I working shifts we really needed sleep and this was a really quick solution for us.

What i would do is move DD out of the shared room for about a week if pos.If he is just playing in his room then leave him to it eventually he will get bored/tired and go back to bed.

The way we dealt with DD going to the stair gate was wait until she called one of us.we would then just go up and stand at the gate and tell her to go back to bed.if upset then we would cuddle and lay her back down.the only reason we went up was her stair gate was a pressure fitted one and wouldn't take too much shaking from DD to get it to fall!!!

One word of warning i would give is make sure your 3yr old doesn't know how to open the stair gate.DD worked it out eventually after watching me a few times
HTH

[Chicki]

Thank you, I will give it a go tonight, and also move DD.

Last night he slept through, from 9 until 7.45, i am hoping that by putting him back in his bed we have cracked it but i think he was just so tired he had to get some sleep! 

I am assuming that he will either end up on the floor, in his sisters bed, or if desperate enough back in his own bed, wish me luck, and thanks for the reply! I will post with our results tonight.

Have a great day, it VERY HOT here in Sydney today!

Beck

[andibig]

Beck
Keep me posted!!
DD would climb into bed with Nanny when she stayed over and then pop back into her own bed!!

Wish we had some sun, here its constantly raining at the mo
 

[Chicki]

Its not working!!!
The other night I did WI/WO for half an hour, he eventually became so wound up he became short of breath and because he has been in hospital with bronchiolitis a couple of times I was worried I would make him have an asthma attack!!!  He got more and more hysterical the other night so my husband came up, took him out of the cot, cuddled him for 5 minutes until he calmed down, then he put him back into the cot calm and awake and he went straight to sleep and slept for 11.5 hours!
Then yesterday I put him into his room, i left him to it with the baby gate in place, an hour later he went to sleep and i found him on the floor next to the gate, he was happy when he went to sleep.
Last night Adam put him to sleep happy, it took him over an hour to go to sleep but he did it happily but was up at 4.45am. Adam "tried" for 45 minutes then got him up for the day which i thought was mixed messages........
then at 11.45 he quietly went upstairs and 10 minutes later i found him asleep in his sisters bed.
I think he is only getting about 10 hours sleep per day total at the moment, so he is now overtired too.

I am baffled, but I have a plan, here it is, any comments would be MUCH appreciated, if anyone can help me by tweaking this plan I would be very happy

12-2 nap
5.30 dinner
6pm play in the park next door with dad and sister
6.30 bath
6.40 into pjs
6.45 3 books in room
7pm into the cot with a bottle, also a sippy cup with water in case of night thirst

1) sleep in cot only - say to him "here is your sippy cup, now you have to stay in bed"
2) go in only if he gets out of bed or screams seriously, not just whinging
3) stay out if awake and happy and in bed
4) say "sleepytime" when putting him back in and laying him down, rub back and then leave if crying or not
5) if still upset count to ten, walk back in and put him back into cot / lay him down (depending on if he got out or not)
repeat repeat repeat
6) if he gets hysterical stay and rub his back until he is calm but don't get him out of bed as its very hard to get him back in again

if he starts to grunt or get short of breath all bets are off and he is comforted to sleep after giving him some puffer
try to limit his sleeps to 2 or 3 hours a day, even if overtired - is this right? i dont want him compensating for nocturnal wakings every day by sleeping

i was so confident a couple of days ago going into this but now i am baffled, am i doing the right thing? will it work? am i giving wrong signals by staying if he is hysterical?  i feel like i should just ditch the baby gate now

Beck

[Chicki]

I just need to add another thing

6 - 7 pm have two glasses of wine (mum, not baby), which makes the crying easier to deal with unfortunately i can't do that in the middle of the night

[andibig]

Beck
Sorry things aren't going well .
Firstly I agree don't let him make up nighttime sleep during the day.If DD starts to get OT I tend to try and get her to bed earlier and that usually adds on to her nighttime sleep.

If your DS is getting upset then staying with him is not giving mixed messages.You tend to know which crying is safe to leave.Usually a mantra cry (or sort of whiny cry) with DD I know i don't have to go to her.Anything more and then i will go to her room and comfort her.

I tend not to leave her room if she is crying I'd rather she was settled before I leave (not necessarily asleep).
HTH

[christians mummy]

Hello!
just thought I would add my 2c in regards to the cot/toddler bed.
My Son started doing the exact same thing, at the same age as yours only 2 months ago. Despite all his 'friends' being in toddler beds, I really didn't think I was going to have much luck, and really thought he was too young for it.

Anyway, I did it, expecting a week worth of hell/no sleep, and he transitioned really well. I really underestimated him!
Of course he got up and would go to the door (closed), but we would just walk in and lay him back down. After doing that twice, he would hear us coming and run back to the bed himself - and was asleep within an hour the first night, and about 10 minutes the second night, and we have not looked back.

I must add tho..DS is VERY spirited, and would not leave the door closed, so we got a door knob cover (Dream baby) and put it on the inside of his door. He has always slept with the door closed, so that was no problem for him.
He tried to open the door about 3 times, and hasn't even bothered since.
A baby gate wouldn't have worked for us, as he would have constantly been distracted by noise and light.

I know you have your daughter in the same room, but just wanted to let you know how easy it turned out to be for us, as I would have SWORN we were in for horrible time !

Good Luck

Belinda

[Chicki]

Belinda thanks very much for the encouragement!

I have some good news to report. We have gone from 1.5 - 2 hour wakings to wakings between 5 and 20 minutes long!  We only have to put him back in his cot about 3 times before bed now and lay him down a few times, there is a lot less crying and not ALL mornings are horribly early!

Yesterday I put him in his cot, I didn't hear a peep, an hour later I checked on him and he had turned on all the spotlights above his sisters bed and was sound asleep in her bed, another hour later I checked again and he was asleep in the toddler bed!  He is a little freak!

It only took about 20 minutes for him to go to sleep in his cot last night, I had to put him back in a few times and do a bit of patting but he fell asleep by himself peacefully, then woke just before 4am and I was in there for about 15 minutes but instead of him screaming and fighting me he lay down.  Also he stood in his cot and called to me instead of announcing himself 10cm from my face loudly and cheerfully.

I want him to stay in his cot for a while longer and then in a few months I think I will pop him into the toddler bed, he is pretty safe getting out of his cot by himself but its a hassle for him to do it, which I think is a bit of disincentive to doing it a LOT.

Anyway, I want to thank everyone for the encouragement, I didn't think it would work and it has only taken a couple of weeks of gentle training for him to finally "get it" enough for me to see that we are on the way to going back to restful nights.

Good luck to everyone else
Beck

[andibig]

Woo hoo to the little man