Well, things are going down hill . . . and I'm not dealing with it well
. . .
The first few posts of this thread, although I said "big boy bed," all we had actually done was lower the side of the crib that drops. It drops down pretty far making it really easy for him to climb out--that way he wouldn't hurt himself (as he was climbing out anyhow at nap time) and he'd get used to having easy access out and we could see how it affected his night sleep.
Doing that had no affect on night sleep--he went to bed fine, slept until his normal time, and stayed in his bed in the morning til I got him out (which I always do ASAP when he wakes). Then he got sick and actually napped a few days in the crib with the side dropped--he felt pretty icky and I was giving him cough meds which likely contributed to his drowsiness.
So, then, we removed the crib side that drops and put up the toddler bed rails. I have to say, I thought the dropped crib side was pretty close to what the toddler rails would be like, but I was wrong; they are much shorter, there's an open gap--it totally changes the feel of the bed. DS helped DH makes the switch and when we went to take the removed crib side out of the room DS got all upset and tried to stop us and almost like he was trying to pack it back over to the crib. I sat down and told him that we were changing his bed b/c now he was a big boy, so he didn't need that part of his crib anymore and he then let us take it out of the room without further fuss.
Well, since then, I feel like his attitude toward his bed and going to bed has totally changed. When we go in to do his wind down (books, pray, into bed) he won't pick out books, he runs around the room, he seems to have nervous energy/anxiety about the way the bed is now.
Since going to the toddler rails, he hasn't napped. Not sure if this would have been the case anyhow just because he's not sick and taking cough meds now--he wasn't napping a lot before wh/ is what led to his climbing out, wh/ is what led to us transitioning.
Since going to the toddler rails, at night time there seems to be some anxiety and weirdness from him about going to bed. He falls right to sleeep, doesn't climb out, but in the morning he wakes up and immediately gets up, turns off his sound machine, bangs on the door and then is running around the room when I come in.
He's also waking slightly earlier than normal--very slightly. For the last few months I've had to wake him most mornings, sometime between 8:00-8:45. Now he's waking up on his own right around 8:00.
He's been so weird about bed time that we're struggling to get him to bed earlier (partially parental fault here--having trouble mentally shifting what time bed time is after it being the same for so long; partially him stalling and having melt downs, etc). Last night he had a full on melt down at bed time and had to turn off the lights, rock him, and sing to him for 5 minutes to get him to stop crying. Once he was calm, he was okay when I put him into bed.
So, it would seem that having the crib side, even dropped, had some sort of psychological impact on him and its absence is affecting him. In the next few weeks, regardless of what we do with the bed situation, we need to move him out of the nursery and into his new bedroom to create a three month gap b/f baby arrives where the nursery isn't his bedroom. Since we were making this transition, at the point, I'd intended to move him to a twin bed with a rail, but now I'm at a total loss as that feels like a lot of change for him to handle.
If I weren't due in 3 months, I'd put the crib side back up, keep it dropped so he could get out w/o hurting himself, but still have the benefits of the psychological barrier and leave it like that until he turned 3. It seems silly to buy a 2nd crib, however, just so he can have a psychological barrier for another 6-9 months . . . .although 6-9 months is a LONG time in a toddler world, and a LONG time if his sleep becomes an issue just as #2 is arriving.
We've only had the toddler rails up for 3 days. He's only had about 11-11.5 hours sleep total each of those days. How long do I give it before declaring it a disaster and bailing? When I look at it written out it doesn't really sound totally disasterous, but he's getting OT and crabby and last night's melt down was awful, so atm, it feels disasterous, kwim?
