2.5 year old still not STTN...

[LadyCatherine185]

nak

It has been awhile since i've posted here! A little background--

DS1 woke every hour or more (he had a couple months where he was waking every 15-30 minutes) for the first year or so, then from 12-18 months he'd wake every 1-2 hours. Around 19 mpnths old (newly pg with DS2) i nightweaned using jay gordon (but took a month rather than 10 days) and he began sleeping 3-5 hours at a time.. he also barely made a fuss during NW'ing. At 20 months we moved him to his own bed, and had DH handle wakeups.

Well, that was almost a year ago and he is still waking up 1-2 times a night. Most nights it is not a huge deal, as DH usually just joins him in his bed for the rest of the night, but he goes out of town 1-2 times per week and i am stuck handling both boys' wakeups (ds2 cosleeps). it is getting really tough, as i usually end up carrying and holding ds2 while sitting in bed with ds1 until he is back asleep.. which can take anywhere from 5-30 minutes. and he is up for the day at 6 AM and between waking to nurse ds2 every 2-3 hours and having to get up with ds1 once or twice i am exhausted! he is not hungry/thirsty, he has had all of his teeth for awhile.. i dont know why he's still waking and needing so much help to get back to sleep... help!

[Ldavis24]

I don't have any advice, but I am interested in what others have to say..DD is 21 months and she wakes up at least 4 times a night screaming her head off..it's getting old.

Goodluck! I hope someone can provide some good insight or suggestions or something!

[LadyCatherine185]

Lauren- she may be cutting her 2 yr molars, which are pretty painful

[D_McG]

Instead of going to sleep with him, your DH might try trying to just soothe him vocally. Sitting by his bed or even from the door. That's what we had to do with DS. Basically remove ourselves from his nights.

For the longest time we just let him come in our bed though. That worked out pretty well, too. We wouldn't go get hiim. The deal was if he could get his butt to our bed and not make any noise, he was welcome

[LadyCatherine185]

Originally Posted by D_McG 

Instead of going to sleep with him, your DH might try trying to just soothe him vocally. Sitting by his bed or even from the door. That's what we had to do with DS. Basically remove ourselves from his nights.

For the longest time we just let him come in our bed though. That worked out pretty well, too. We wouldn't go get hiim. The deal was if he could get his butt to our bed and not make any noise, he was welcome

i was thinking dh may have to do the verbal soothing to try to get him to stop waking.. i wish we could have him in bed but he is NOT quiet and both he and ds2 are light sleepers, so would keep eachother up all night. :(

[JuliMummy]

I would think he is old enough to be reasoned with. Have you thought about offering some sort of reward for staying in his bed all night without calling for you (or your husband)? This worked really well for us when my son was 2 and a bit. My daughter was just a few months old and keeping me up half the night, and my son kept getting up in the middle of the night wanting me to tuck him back in and sitting with him. After a few nights of me ending up yelling at him to go back to bed (which resulted in everybody crying and nobody sleeping), we decided to try offering him a sticker to put up on a piece of paper in the kitchen if he stayed in his bed all night and didn't call for me. He loved stickers, so we didn't even have to say he has to get so many stickers before he gets a reward or anything like that - the stickers were reward enough in themselves :) 

Anyway, from that night on he stayed in his bed all night! He is now a champion sleeper. Now all we have to do is get our daughter to sleep well too and I'll be happy....

I hope this helps. Good luck!