2yr 10mo can't wind down at bedtime since BF stopped

[KatyBee]

My fairly LSN son has never been a great sleeper but he dropped his nap a few months ago and bedtimes became a real breeze. I was still breastfeeding to sleep & he would be asleep within a few mins and sleep through about 11 hours.

I am now pregnant and 3/4 weeks ago my milk dried up and I stopped feeding my son. We obviously initiated a new routine of bedtime stories, which my son loves, but bedtime has gradually been taking longer and longer. The knock on from this is that the late bedtimes caused serious OT & EW, & he started crashing out & taking late naps and bedtimes started getting silly! At one point he was finally falling asleep at around 10:30pm & waking at 5am and the cycle continued.

We finally got him to sleep earlier in the car one night which resulted in less OT and a couple of NNDs so I was hoping my son would start go to bed more easily. I felt I timed BT right & he was just the right tired, not OT & we had the new bedtime routine, but he just got more & more wound up & we resorted to driving him in the car again.

He usually falls asleep in the car within a couple of mins (sometimes only seconds)  - so I'm positive my timing of bedtime at home is good re: him being tired enough to sleep, but he just gets so hyper during his bedtime routine. He's often up & down like a yo-yo. It is almost impossible to get him to relax & he can't be left alone as he just won't stay in bed. I have tried starting it super early so as not to miss sleepy window or risk any OT but even if he seems like he is chilled he inevitably fights it and gets crazy.

Also as the car naps 'force' him to sleep earlier than when we just preserve in his room at home, he sleeps longer overall as he is not so OT, which is helping to keep the OT/nap cycle at bay a bit, so it's becoming too appealing to use it all the time.

We have resorted to the car quite a few times now and I'm starting to worry about creating an unsustainable crutch.

As I have obviously removed the BF which was like an off switch to his brain, how do I help him find a new sleep trigger without suffering chronic OT? I'm at a bit of a loss!

[becj86]

Can you still have cuddles? DS cuddled with me and put his hand on my breast and that was a sleep cue for a while after we stopped BF...

[KatyBee]

Thank you becj86 - we do that. He always has us laying with him for cuddles... But he gets so restless, he just fidgets non stop whilst we do wind down & story... he doesn't really want a proper cuddle. He is definitely tired (as he sleep within mins if we transfer to car) but it's like he is fighting relaxing...

[becj86]

DYT he'd find a massage helpful? what about getting him to close his eyes and you doing some guided relaxation?

[Jodes112]

Hi,

Just for a bit of reassurence my daughter is the ssme and will never sit still at bedtime and when she is tired she gets even more hyper.

She is ok with going to bed though as there is no prop issue.

What actually happens when you put him in bed at bedtime and you leave? Does he get up and come out? Does he stay in bed and cry? Does he just lay awake quietly? And how do you handle it?

[KatyBee]

Last night for example he just flatly refused to go to bed, everytime I took him in there he just ran out of the room saying. "I don't want to go to bed" but after less than 2 minutes in the car he was soundo & then did a good nights sleep and was refreshed this morning - so my timing was good in my opinion.

Most nights he'll accept going to bed, we lay in the dark sometimes with nursery rhymes on the monitor (at his request) and he asks me to tell him a story, which I do. He then fidgets like crazy, will often get out of bed & leave the room. Eventually he'll accept staying  in his room but if I try to leave insists on coming with me... so we just stay with him until he eventually falls asleep, but this can take up to  2 hours and results in some ridiculous overtiredness, poor nights sleep & a cranky baby that crashes out the next day & perpetuates the OT cycle!

I'm really lost... it's like his off switch (when he is tired as opposed to OT) is broken!

ETA: also a few times recently when laying in bed with me next to him he has said over & over "don't go anywhere mummy" or "don't leave me mummy".... before he falls asleep.

[Jodes112]

It really sounds to me like it is behavioural, that he just doesnt want you to go and he knows you wont if he asks you, or puts up a fuss, and he isnt quite sure how to act/comfort himself Which is probably triggered from him feeling comforted with his usual breastfeed before bed to now not getting that.

Id stop taking him out in the car (i totally understand why you do this though) and start to incorporate a new bedtime routine where he can self settle.

Have you tried any methods to keep him in his room? If dd has every gone through phases of getting up out of bed once i have left, i have always gently got her hand, without speaking and took her back. Not angry, just gentle. And provided comfort if needed, a gentle cuddle and kiss then leave. And repeat. After a while she would get the picture and stay in bed.

If this fails and he is really upset, then you should have a look at gradual withdrawal where you start in the room, and over several days gradually move out of the room. Stay with him until he stays asleep (this may take hours you will need to be dedicated)

Also if you think he might be scared, does he have a night light? Both my DS and DD have a little night light which was introduced when they were frigtened to be in the dark on their own.

[KatyBee]

Funnily enough Jodes (and thank you for taking time to reply by the way  ) I hadn't read your post until just now, but tonight I decided it was time for a reset & we were not going out in the car & I would just take as long as needed to get him to sleep at home.

Oh boy, did we meet some resistance. He got very, very upset as he was adamant it wasn't bedtime & he didn't want to lie on his bed. But his dad & I were very firm and every single time he claimed out of bed we put him back in & explained that it was bedtime and he had to stay there but that we'd stay until he was asleep. He cried a lot and got physically very agitated, so much that at one point he threw his head back so hard it hit the wall with a crack and that escalated things even more. But eventually he just curled up against my legs sobbing, did a huge yawn and fell asleep. Was asleep at 8:10pm (was awake at 6:25am this morning) so quite a long NND, but certainly not the longest bedtime attempt recently.

There is 100% no way he'd stay there without me in the room & to be fair after having had me there almost every night of his life whilst he falls asleep, because of the breastfeeding, I think that's a step too far at this stage.

Am planning more of a gradual withdrawal, once I can get him relaxed enough to accept going to bed in the first place. At the moment he just doesn't register that he is tired AT ALL. I don't know how to help him with that though?

[Jodes112]

I think it is perfectly normal for him to not be acting sleepy before bed....  He is obviously tired as he drops straight to sleep with motion. I know my daughter is the same and will be having a little rave right to being put into bed! My son though, was not likethat and would always sit and have a cuddle before bed and 'chill out'.

The kids have bath at 6.15, abd then they have 'chill time' which is from after bath (about 6.40ish) to bedtime (7pm for dd 7.30 for ds) out chill time generally consists of us all sitting on the settee either reading books or watching Miles from tomorow (which finishes at 7) once that finishes DD knows its bedtime. DS will sit down with me and dh and cuddle up, read, chat. And always have been that way. DD though potters about, she will get some toys and be playing, she will
Pop upstairs for something, come back down, she wont sit still. Its just how she is! I guess its the spirited in her! Which reminds me of how you describe your DS. She seems to hype up more when she is tired.

That said, when its bedtime, its bedtime, and i simply say 'its bedtime' ask her to kiss her dad and brother, which she does. And she has a mad dash upstaird like she has a full day of energy in her. She has a wee then i put her in bed we have a kiss and a song, and i leave. She often sings to herself for 10/15 mins then is asleep.

What im trying to explain is, although he may not seem to be able to switch off, he IS tired and if you implement gradual withtdrawal i think you will crack the problem!

[KatyBee]

Grrrr... Up before 5:30am (because  OT when he eventually fell asleep)... which means he'll crash at some point today & bedtimes goes completely out of the window (even a minutes sleep adds hours onto his days)

This is how we ended up using the car because naps make things so much more difficult and we needed to catch him up to manage a few NNDs... but now trying a normal bedtime has already screwed things up again.

I don't know how to escape this cycle to be able to fix bedtime?

[Katet]

At the moment he just doesn't register that he is tired AT ALL. I don't know how to help him with that though?

I have a LSN child & while we didn't have the issue that he fell asleep BF at that age, I did find that he did need a LONG wind down period & a very clear routine... lots of clear & obvious steps over at least a 1 hour periods so he starts to get a pattern that he understands is time for bed.

After almost 3 years of one routine, you have to expect it will take him time to learn a new one & it will be met with resistance because he won't know how to react. The fact that he does drop off so quickly in the car says to me that you might be leaving it too late & he has a second wind & so harder to settle down.

[KatyBee]

I had such a similar conversation with my husband last night Katet... I do think he needs a far more clearly defined routine over about an hour & I'm going to start being stricter about that. One big issue we'll have tonight is that he is currently napping.... and that usually throws bedtimes completely as he just isn't tired enough at bedtime.

I tried starting wind down to bed much earlier in case I was missing the sleepy window, but it made absolutely no difference to the time he fell asleep & I found the resistance even more pronounced (understandably as he doesn't feel tired!)

He is honestly WIDE awake from about 3/4pm (when he always gets a dip) but is not always hyper (suggesting OT) but just happy, content & awake with absolutely zero sleepy signs. The other complication is that my husband arriving home always ramps things up (even though hubby tries to stay very calm etc) & that happens anytime around bedtime each night. None of this stuff made much difference when he was fed to sleep... I don't know how to replace the calm that process gave him.

[Emily S]

Hi katybee, I can empathize since I think I'm going through something similar. My 2y 1mo son was drinking milk from a bottle for months but we've recently had to stop as it triggers his cough and causes him to cough up all his milk almost every night. So now instead of falling asleep on the bottle, he's just drinking from a cup and we brush his teeth after milk, which was always our intention so his teeth is clean before sleep.

Problem with that is that since we removed bottle feeding to sleep he has put up massive struggles at bedtime. He used to fall asleep regularly at 830pm and wakes 730am, with a lunch time nap from 12 to 2pm. He was very contented and it all seemed to be working well.

 For the past 2 to 3 weeks since the change tho, he has been fighting sleep. We have a calming bed time routine of reading his favourite book after milk and brushing teeth but he refuses to sleep after that. He will try to climb out of bed and keep playing until the point of being OT. The only way we can stop him is to forcibly hug him while lying with him in bed but this results in a very angry crying child and he goes on crying hysterically for a ridiculously long time to the point of being OT. By the time he eventually crashes out its 930pm or later and we're absolutely wrecked.

Sorry I have no solutions as I'm going through the same problem. Every online sleep tip I've read doesnt seem to really help. I've tried starting bed time routine at 730pm and cutting afternoon nap shorter to 1.5 hours but nothing so far has worked. I think he is not getting enough sleep as it is as he is mostly tiredin the morning when I wake him at 730am so won't cut his nap any further. He is clearly tired by 830pm to 9pm.

 Would much appreciate some advice here! How do I end the bed time struggles he puts up?

[KatyBee]

Oh Emily! That sounds really tough too... it's crazy how they come to rely on these sleep inducers.

Not a lot of progress here really, we just have to be very firm on when bedtime routine starts & he mustn't leave the bed but it's still tears & tantrums until he finally just gives in. It's pretty horrible & such a change from how things were. His bedtime is now 1-1.5 hours later than it was (although wake up is only a few minutes later) and so we are dealing with a constantly tired little boy. It's not much fun.

I really hope you find a solution soon & sympathise with you in the meantime
 

[*Ali*]

I'd just push through to an early BT even on days he really seems to need a nap. I think if you can get a week of nnds in a row his body should adapt to the longer days.

And I'd defo go the GW route. Like you and PPs say it would be too big a step to jump to BT without you there.

Good luck.