Someone please help me with my 3-year-old's sleep problems...

[malayasmommy]

I am almost getting to my wits end here, so I thought maybe I’d post BEFORE I totally lose all my marbles…

This is going to be kind of longer, so I’ll post in short bullets to make it easier!

--DD turned 3 today, never been the most consistent sleeper/napper.  We have a very flexible schedule but really try hard to keep the bedtime/naptime routines very consistent.  She'll go through a few months where her schedule is consistent, and then suddenly it will change and we're floundering.  Well, we're floundering now BIG TIME and I feel totally out of options.

--She was on a fairly regular schedule for sleep/naps until 1 to 1.5 mos ago: wake up between 6:30-7:30am, nap around 1:30pm (1-2 hours), bedtime around 8:30pm.

--About 1 to 1.5 mos ago she suddenly changed for 2 weeks, she was sleeping longer (8:30pm-8:30am) and not needing a nap.  We thought “Oh, this was timed PERFECTLY!” because my work schedule changed slightly. She was going to the neighborhood lady’s at a different time—smack in the middle of what her naptime was (DD’s sleep schedule changed before my work schedule changed), so I had been really wondering what to do about nap time.  It seemed I found my answer—no nap time, just sleeping later, woo hoo!

--EXCEPT that it all changed about 2 weeks ago.  Now we’ll put her to bed around 8pm and she’ll wake up anywhere from 4:30am-8:30am.  It’s all over the map.  When she wakes up early she is HYPER and won’t go back to sleep.  Then she's tired at 10am, but won't take a nap--AT ALL--the rest of the day.  She's a monster, and she's tired, but WILL.NOT.SLEEP.  Then she'll have days when she'll sleep to around her previously normal time--7am-ish--and need to nap at 1:30pm.  Right when I need to bring her to someone else's house to be watched.  (She's never been able to sleep there.) 

--My question is: routine and consistency are important with sleep and I know this.  And the actual routines themselves are VERY consistent, but how do I create consistency with the TIME of sleep when her wake times are so inconsistent?  When I make her stay awake during the day so that nap time is the same, she gets overtired and can't sleep during normal naptime.  If she sleeps later and I try putting her down at the earlier time, she's not tired at all.  She's waking up a lot at night too, very hyper in the middle of the night.  (Or she has to potty, or her tags are bugging her, etc.)  I feel like she's running on sleep deprivation but I don't know how to help her sleep more when she's so inconsistent.  And the final challenge is that now with the new routine (which I really need to keep), her previously consistent nap time is interrupted by us having to leave our home.  I'm at a loss...

--My husband and I tag-team parent and I work in the evenings, so I'm by myself with her all day and then go to work right until bedtime.  So I am sleep deprived from multiple wakings, dealing with a tired/cranky toddler all day by myself, and then going to work right until bedtime with NO break at all during the day...it's wearing on me.  Not to mention I'm 7 months pregnant.  I need help...please...thank you so much.  :-)

[Courtney-Ostaff]

What I realized is that my 3 yr old (38 month) daughter has settled into a 2-day sleeping routine.  
The first day, she wakes up about 9 or so, stays up all day, and then goes to bed fairly early, about 8:00 or so.  The next day, she'll wake up early, about 7 or 7:30, but then nap from 3 to 5 or so.  Of course, then she's up late, 'til 11ish, and wakes up late again, at 9 or so.

If I deprive her of that late nap, she's a monster, and goes to bed early -- but doesn't necessarily nap the next day.  So then she's double-deprived, and No Good comes of it. This transitional period between napping and not napping doesn't make Mommy happy over here, either, let me tell you!  I just try to remember that she needs about 10-11 hours of sleep per night, and make sure she gets that on any given day (previous sleep period + nap).

One thing you can do is enforce a quiet time during her Monster period.  Even if she's not napping, the rest can do her good.  Another thing that works for me is to take a drive about noon, especially after some vigorous physical activity and then some carb-heavy lunch.  The enforced stillness often lulls her to sleep.

[poorlittlefish]

Oh that sounds so hard.  I don't have great advice for you but I just finished the book Sleepless in America and it really opened my eyes to just how much little ones need sleep.  In the book it explained that if you child wakes early, often in the night or has a hard time settling to go to sleep, it probably means that they are OVER tired.  It explains how their body and mind don't align in that way so if their mind is tired they can't calm their body.  She stressed consistancy with that--how a later bedtime, a skipped nap, etc all line up to make sleep harder. 

It sounds to me like she might need more sleep--an earlier bedtime perhaps. If she is not getting a nap in the afternoons or you are trying to move her in that direction, I would say she needs to be in bed by 7:30 at the latest. It can take a while to get in a new routine so I would say put her down earlier by 15mins every couple of days until you get back to 7:30.  Another thing I loved about that book was that she didn't say that there was any right way to get your kid to sleep--nurse, rock, lay with them etc--it doesn't matter as long as they sleep.  The need for sleep is paramount.  She also says you need to calm your child and make them feel safe so they can sleep.  I will share my 3YO DD's routine that we tweeked from reading that book and it has gone really smoothly and her behavior has even improved:

6:15am  up for the day

1:30-3:30 nap

7:30 bedtime (I read stories and lay with her for a while talking to calm her)

I hope that this helps!