Nearly 3 year old and awake for hours every night

[Bryony]

I can't believe it - K is nearly 3 years old and we are STILL having NW. That's three years of broken nights...

Her current issue is waking up exactly 5 hours after going to sleep and then being awake for 1-3 hours before going back to sleep. During that time, she calls for us every 10-20 minutes wanting a drink / cuddle / light on / light off / pillow putting back into place / whatever - you name it, she is faffing around not comfortable, can't get back to sleep. In between calling for us she sings and tells stories.  Then gets bored or whatever and calls for us again.  Last night she was awake from 12:45 to 4:15am.  She then goes back to sleep until I wake her up in the morning (I have to wake her up at 7:30 or soon after on work days, at weekends if I am still asleep then she wakes up of her own accord somewhat later).

It's driving me nuts!

Does anyone have any ideas?  Is she OT?  UT?  I'm a bit nervous about making changes to bedtime in case I make things worse but I think I need to try either earlier or later bedtime for a while to see what happens.

She goes to sleep around 7:30 or soon after each evening, and in theory our getting up time is 7:30am although she's often still asleep if she's been awake for hours the night before. She dropped her nap in April but if she's had a few really bad nights she will sometimes fall sleep in the buggy during the day - I generally wake her after 30 mins though, otherwise it's hard to get her down in the evening.

She's been a real pickle sleepwise all along - very sensitive to OT or UT and very hard to get it "right" in spite of her being an excellent independent sleeper, no props or anything.

I am ashamed to say that her lack of sleep is one of the reasons that we have not been brave enough to go for #2. And now she is starting to ask why she doesn't have a brother or sister, like all her friends do. I don't feel I can tell her the truth - that she's such a lousy sleeper I can't comprehend having a newborn as well!

Any suggestions gratefully recieved!

B

[Fiver]

Couldn't read and not post ((((you))))

Callum really dropped his nap before he was totally ready to and we aim to get him to bed by about 6.30pm for a 7am get up.  Sometimes he gets up earlier than that and if it's loads earlier, we then have to do an even earlier night to get him back on track for the 7am or later wake up.  We were nervous about putting him to bed so early, but it seems to work for him, on the whole.

[louis-mummy]

Phew you must be totally worn out 

with such an erratic sleep pattern it must be hard to figure out what's happening.......you've probably considered/tried it already but how about WTS if it seems to be habitual? or a reward chart for if she goes back to sleep without your help - if you think there is an element of her looking for that interaction with you?

has she been waking after 5hrs since dropping her nap? i'm not sure if i read something similar on another post about dropping the nap?........

I am having a good time sleepwise with Louis at the moment *crosses fingers* but on the whole i would say he's been a lousy sleeper for most of the last 29 months - its crazy isn't it?!!!

[Peek-a-boo]

This post has some striking similarities:  http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=162437.0

Bryony--this may sound crazy, but it is so odd that this happens since she's such an independent sleeper.   I have a cousin who had terrible sleep issues--would be awake, content, but unable to get back to sleep for hours during the middle of the night.  Her mother took her to a naturpath who did some testing and they discovered she's intolerant of potato starch (which, surprisingly, is in everything!) and when the cut it from her diet her DD started sleeping so much better and so much more.  I don't know how you feel about alternative medicine, but at this point, I wonder if it would be worth exploring something along those lines as perhaps there is something bigger at play?  I suggest this, in part because I know how attentive you are to good sleep habits, watching her sleep window, etc and yet still have ongoing NW issues. 

[Bryony]

Thanks everyone xx

Amanda - thanks for the hugs! 

Laura - we hit something similar a year or two and tried WTS - with possibly some success - had forgotten that, thanks for the reminder. I might try it again - DH is often up late so could go in and prod her!!  We did also try a reward system for a while - the sleep fairy gave her a chocolate button every morning if she went through the night before without calling for mummy (I don't mind if she's awake - she can't help that - but would prefer that she didn't need me to be awake as well!). We then stopped it last summer during a phase when she was sleeping a bit better as we don't generally use a "rewards" style of parenting (and I didn't want her having chocolate for breakfast too often!)  I was talking to DH about restarting this - maybe we will need to as it's such a big issue at the moment.

Bethany - interesting about the potato starch. Katie hates potato in any shape or form, but as you say, it's probably an ingredient in everything. In general I am not into complementary medicine (being rather a hard core health care professional myself) but will certainly think about it - I am happy to try anything at this point!  Just had a look at that link to Paula's post - wow that sounds really similar, right down to the 5 hours.

We are away this weekend (if we can get there in the snow LOL) and the hotel doesn't serve dinner until 6:45pm as the first sitting, so we will end up with her going to bed later - so will see if that makes things better or worse - and then review next week with a view to starting WTS or rewards again.

Thanks for the support ladies, love you all !!!  xx

[jess, lukeys_mom]

Hey B, just dropping off some hugs to you and Katie! We are not quite going through what you are experiencing, but Luke is waking often in the night now with "requests" and then saying he doesn't want to be alone in there  we have never ever co-slept but Dylan is in our room so who knows...

Anyway I don't know what the answer is. In our case it sometimes helps if I say at the first NW: "OK, I will get you that ____ , but I cannot keep coming in here so please think about if you need anything else and if so tell me now." and often we will go over what he should do if he can't sleep - find his "friends" - his lovey and 2 other stuffed toys that he was allowed to choose to "help him sleep" and snuggle tight with them, etc. Then if there are subsequent NWs I only go in and say "Lukey, it's sleepytime now. We are all sleeping. You know what to do when you can't sleep" etc. Sometimes helps...but admittedly not always and on some nights he really presses.

Sorry you guys are still having issues, you are a superwoman for how well you've managed under such sleep deprivation xxx

[Bryony]

Thanks Jess for the support. We have done some role play too - practicing K to cuddle up to muzzy and go back to sleep....

So... we were away for the weekend.. and she went to bed much later every night (the earliest that the hotel served food i the evening was 6:45pm - and by the time we'd eaten, got to bed etc, it was pretty late - she ended up going to sleep around 8:30 - 9pm each night instead of her usual 7:30pm).  And.....  in spite of it being noisy, a strange bed with nasty plastic mattress cover, sharing a room with me and DH etc.... she STTN every night for the last 4 nights!!!   I feel it's a bit too soon to get too excited, as we may be headng for OT further down the line - but it's interesting.... 

So I wonder does she just need so much less sleep than other LOs?    She seems perfectly happy on less sleep....

Bit of a pain if she isn't going to go to bed until 9pm each night - pretty much makes going out impossible as we don't have anyone to babysit who she knows well enough to let them put her to bed - but getting more sleep at night has got to be good!

B 

[jess, lukeys_mom]

Oh I hope that's the answer for you!!! Hugs xxx

[Mom_to_L&S]

Only now just found this thread as I was searching for some answers myself for Lena´s horrid 5AM EWs that have been going on for the last 2 weeks.
Going by your FB-status, the trip away didnt´t break the trend?
Are you considering WTS?

Amazing how I had forgotten about WTS alltogether   I guess I thought I didn´t need those techniques anymore now Lena is older, hah! We might try it too.
All in all, it´s no brain surgery trying to figure out the reasons for her EW´s : she recently started preschool and, after a good start, she is struggling a bit now, we´re in the middle of moving house plus she is close to her 3rd birthday so I´ve been keeping the 6-monthly growthspurt in mind.
Do you think the growthspurt could be the reason for Katies NW´s as well?

That being said, knowing the reason doesn´t really bring us any closer to solving it, does it?
We´re also not really into rewards as we feel that since she´s getting older, we´d like to teach her the "right" behavior motivated by internalized motives rather than external ones like rewards.
When Lena wakes at 5am, she calls for us happily and gets upset if we don´t respond quick enough   She´ll bargain to get up (she´s still in her cot), which we don´t give in to and she ends up settling for browsing through some books and singing while in bed. When that gets boring, she calls out again, DH´s alarm goes off at 5.45pm and then he´s off into the shower and that´s her cue to just wait untill he´s done and then he takes her up and goes in the livingroom. This is the only time she has with DH since he only gets home from work at 7pm and she´s asleep by then, so we really don´t want to not have her have this time with him. She used to wake at 6.30am and then have that 30mins with him, not much but it´s at least something untill she gradually goes to bed later again after this dropped-nap-transition.

Since dropping nap + preschool, she has a super-early bedtime of 6.20pm instead of her usual 7.30pm and still naps 2 days a week to catch up.
She seems happy enough during the day, not overly tired but definately ready for bed by 6pm.
Could she be OT? But then why wake at 5am overly excited ready to jump into the day? (even very happy to go to preschool despite some adjusment issues)

Seems like a lot of us moms of 3 y/o are going through some sleep-issue at the moment, hopefully we just have to ride it out and things will click back into place one day? I mean, our kids are sleeptrained independant sleepers, they KNOW how to do it, right?

Sophie x

[Bryony]

Hi Sophie, sorry to hear  you are having problems too.  What is Lena's routine at the moment?  I bet this is the last thing you need right now 

For us, I think K just needs a lot less sleep than most LOs of her age. I think we were putting her to bed too early and she was sleeping in two "chunks" - 7:30 - 1am and then 3am to 8am. (we were letting her sleep in until 8pm rather than our usual 7-7:30am as we were all so shattered!!). So yes things have been MUCH better since I started putting her to bed later - she's STTN for 7 out of 8 nghts since then. Of course the one where she didn't STTN, she was awake 1am - 5am or something crazy, but I thnk that was a one-off as (in hindsight) she had a cold coming and I later found out from Venus that she'd had a short nap earlier that day (which is a disaster for her night sleep these days!).   So we are resigning ourselves to no more evenings out together (not that we did often anyway) but a least having a decent night's sleep!

I don't think it's GS related for us - this latest batch of NW had been going on for 18 months. So the last few nights have been bliss!! Sounds like Lena has got a lot going on right now, which may be the issue. Or do you think it's possible she just has had enough sleep?

We´re also not really into rewards as we feel that since she´s getting older, we´d like to teach her the "right" behavior motivated by internalized motives rather than external ones like rewards.

that's exactly how I feel - but couldn't put into words as well as you - thank you for doing so for me!

Hope things resolve for you soon

Bx

[Mom_to_L&S]

Hi Bryony, yay I am so happy for you that you have cracked the problem and are getting some well deserved sleep! So pleased to read that what I read on FB was a glitch. What time does Katie go to bed now?
So now, maybe you can reconsider about TTC?   I´m completely in denial re. having to go through the whole sleeptraining-saga again soon  

Re. Lena´s EW, it´s hard to say if she´s had enough sleep at 5am. It certainly seems that way since she is super-happy and excited when she wakes. The thing is, she has preschool from 8.45am-3.20pm, no opportunity to nap (but she had dropped it on her own 2 weeks before she started preschool) and gets very tired and ready for bed by 6pm. She´s sound asleep by 6.20pm.
I´m a little reluctant to move bedtime forward because I´m afraid of ending up in an OT-cycle. So really don´t know what to do.

Her routine:
Mon-Tues-Thurs-Fri
Wake 5am  
No nap
Bed at 6pm-asleep by 6.20pm, goes down willingly and easily.

Wedn (preschool is only untill 11.45am on wedn)
Wake 5am
Nap 1pm-2.30pm
Bed 7.45pm (so she gets to see DH in the evenings at least that once a week)

Weekends are hit and miss, sometimes she´ll nap either Sat or Sun, never both.

Might give WTS a try, a little nudge around 3am or so...


Sophie x

[Bryony]

So Lena is getting about 10.75 hrs sleep a night plus a 1.5hr nap twice a week is that right?  That's about 11.15 hours a day on average over the week (if my maths is right!), which is within normal for their age - but at the lower end i think. Obviously you know Lena better -  has she generally needed less or more sleep than average?   f you think she's just had enough sleep by 5am, is it possible that you need to cut down the nap a bit on nap days? 

Or on the other hand - f she's generally needed more sleep than average, maybe it's accumulated OT from dropping her nap and starting pre-school?

Sorry fat lot of use aren't I!

So now, maybe you can reconsider about TTC?

Not sure...  will see how it goes!!  Am still a bit scarred by the last 3 years of no sleep - need more than a week of sleep to change my mind!

Bx

[Sarah - Enfys' Mum]

You know Enfys dropped her nap early too, and she often sleeps 11 hours per night, so I think 8.30 to 7.30 is fine.

[Bryony]

Thanks Sarah! x

Sophie - I was thinking - would it help you if you just moved your day later by an hour or so? It might be that things would still need tweaking but it may be less tiring for you?  If so I would pick a weekend day when she might be less tired, and put her down half an hour later for her nap - and then have everything half an hour later.  Then the next weekend do the other half hour?

[Mom_to_L&S]

Thanks for all the feedback, Bryony!

Well, this weekend, Lena hasn´t napped at all so she only had a nap once (wednessday).
Coincidently, Lena slept untill 5.40am this morning and then just asked us to turn on the light in the hall so she could read her books and then let us sleep untill 6.40am, yay!
We had talked about how she, when she wakes so early and we tell her it´s not time to get up yet, she has to just stay in bed, not yell and read untill it´s time to get up. We have had this talk many times  but apparently, it sank in today! Fingers crossed for tonight.

As for moving her day forward, I´m sure you´re right and it would help, but for now, I think the risk of OT would be too high. Like with the 2-1 nap transition, this 1-0 transistion is a little rough combined with all the other stuff she has going on. Will definately strive for it, though.

Thanks again for the help and again, am so pleased Katie is sleeping better