bedtime has become a nightmare!!!

[Nova0929]

Oh my gosh -- at this moment my 2 year old son is in bed with daddy just screaming, howling, yelling, sobbing, kicking the wall .... And it's 10:30pm! This is new in the last two weeks. Before that bedtime was relatively straightforward with a few bumps here and there. But suddenly, WHAM, he cannot go to sleep even with nursing and just yells and screams. What gives?

7pm bathtime, stories, songs
8pm nursing, asleep!

But now it's 8pm, lights off, nursing, then UP! Crawling off the bed lickety split before I even realize he's gone, out the door and down the hall. I've made a rule: you have to stay in bed. You have a choice: either you lie down by yourself, or Mama holds you. He'll lie down for 3 seconds by himself then he's up, jumping, kicking the wall, crawling off the bed. So I hold him and he just sobs and screams, "No, no, no!! Stop it, stop it, stop it!" So I let him lie down by himself and seconds later he's up again totally wound up. This goes on for 2-3 hours! He'll finally fall asleep by 11pm-ish totally exhausted.

My husband and I have tried various things. Reading and reading and reading ... Earlier bedtime. Later bedtime. Singing and walking him around. Nursing and nursing (but he doesn't nurse longer than 1 minute before he's up again). Bottles of warm milk.

No other changes in life .... I'm a full time mom, my husband works full time, baby is due in March and our son seems to understand and talks about it, kisses my belly, etc.

Now my husband is walking him up and down the hallway singing and he's quiet ... but when they try lying down again it's a nightmare again.

Help help! I am completely baffled! And exhausted! And so is my husband and son!

Thank you so much, dear mamas and papas.

[MamaPhD]

OMG that's what was happening to my DD! Up until a month ago, DD happily took one 2 hr nap, then go to bed at 8 like an angel. Suddenly bedtime became like a 2.5 hour struggle of more reading, more holding, more rocking, fussing, asking for snacks, crying, etc!

I'm not sure how but I decided to try to keep her awake during the day and skip the nap. DD is not quite 2 yrs yet so she's a little young to stop napping but, WOW! She's back to being my angel. She does get a little tired around 4pm-ish and will ask for warm milk and kinda play lying down, rolling around, etc. But she is OK staying up until 8 and then goes to bed like in 5 minutes!

Sometimes she is really tired and I do put her down for a 45min-1hr nap, like today. I do wake her up after the hour is up. Then I don't even bother to start bedtime routine until close to 9pm. DD fell asleep at 9:45pm today. But overall it gives her less sleep cuz she napped for 1 hr, but went to bed almost 2hrs later than usual, so I don't do it often. I'm also due in March with our second baby so I do miss "our" nap time but it is waaaaaay worth it to skip that than struggle with her at night!

Is your son still taking naps? Might be worth skipping it to see if that helps. Good luck!

[CinCanada]

No advice here unfortunately but I can definitely commiscerate. My DD is 26mos & I have another due in May. I wonder if it's a developmental stage or a teething thing (she's just now getting the 1st of 4 canine teeth!) but our bedtimes either go off without a hitch around 8 or they go on for hours & hours with a frustrated DH & I collapsing into bed at 10:30 with DD still playing between us.
On an ideal night it works really well to play until 7:15ish then start reading stories on the couch to get her relaxed, do the wash/teeth jammies thing & then have him read stories in bed for 15-20mins more (if I'm there she'll ask to nurse before she's tired enough to sleep) & then I come in & nurse/pat/sing her to sleep around 8 which takes 15 mins or so before I can slip out the door.
Other nights however we'll do the EXACT same routine & she just can't let go at the end of the routine & sits up fully refreshed & ready to go for at least several more hours.
Her naps at the babysitters are at a consistent time of day & are always limited to 1.5 hrs.
It's so frustrating when you're exhausted yourself & still have so much to do.
Last night I just gave up & told her she could follow me around until she was tired but that I was busy & she'd have to play on her own. I expected her to protest but nope! She just played happily in the kitchen while I cleaned up & made lunches. I thought I'd try this approach out of desperation - given, it doesn't help her get the sleep she needs but sometimes I'm just not up to the fight as no amount of rocking, reading, singing or nursing will help once she gets that 2nd wind.

[Nova0929]

Hi, I'm the OP -
I think I may have figured out what the problem is -- and it might be something similar for any of you who are preggers ....

First, in reality this has been going on for almost a week, not two weeks -- now that I look at it in the morning and not while he's screaming in the other room ! Anyway, for this past week or so my son has been pulling away from nursing and saying, "not working." I would check and there is milk there, so I just kind of didn't know what to think. Maybe the flow is less? Then he'd try more, then wiggle around, sit up, and go nuts as I reported.

But this morning I thought, huh ..... Maybe my milk has started tasting bitter or weird to him since I'm pregnant, and he doesn't want to nurse anymore cause of the bitter taste, but he doesn't know how to go to sleep without nursing so he's just up going crazy. This crazy time reminds me of when I tried to stop nursing to sleep about two months ago - that's why I gave up and went back to nursing him to sleep. I actually think this is the problem.

So we might just have to go through a period of a week or two of complete nightmare until he figures out how to sleep without nursing. This might be the time for me to stop offering nursing and just go through the process completely. I did want to have a break from nursing before baby comes, so this might be the way to do it. (We weaned from nursing this summer and only nurse-to-sleep now.) I'm not totally ready to wean yet - I thought maybe we'd do it in January --- but as long as he is going through this difficult period of what I am guessing is the bitter-tasting milk and struggling to sleep, it might be the time to just go through it once.

I could be wrong about the bitter taste, but I'd heard from other mamas that their toddlers stopped nursing when mamas were pregnant because of what they assumed was a bitter taste, so I'm thinking this is a good guess.

Thanks all for responding - it is good to hear that other people are going through this, too! Letting him tag along with me while I clean the kitchen and make lunches is a good idea ..... I just want to be consistent though about keeping him in bed so that he figures it out ... But the other day I let him sit on the couch with me and read stories while I read a magazine around 10pm, and it was really relaxing for both of us ....

[sapphire_chan]

Might just be a 2 year old thing. DD went through a longish period of having trouble getting to sleep. She's finally agreeable enough that we can introduce an actual bedtime routine. The combination of moving through the phase and the routine is starting to make bedtime easier and earlier for us (10pm instead of midnight).

[Latte Mama]

I've heard it's fairly common for milk to decrease during pregnancy. So maybe it's there but not a good flow like before and it's frustrating him?

[JudiAU]

I would tinker with his nap schedule, either move it earlier in the day or shorten. We had a terrible time with our 3 1/2 a few weeks. He napped easily and for a long time during the day but finally had to cut the nap all together. He know goes to be much earlier and get about the same amount of sleep.

I do had one friend who cut naps at age 2 for the same reason. He just couldn't get to sleep anymore at night if he wasn't terribly tired. He goes to bed at 6 pm everynight and wakes up at 6. Then they spend their special time together as a family before they go to work.

Also, your milk supply is probably dipping a lot right now plus changing in flavor. He may be really upset about and can't explain it. My toddler self-weaned very quickly at the exact point in my pregnancy, but luckily it was without tears. Your son might be going through the same self-weaning process (whether you want him to or not) and it may be contributing.