night time crying and waking

[**guest**]

Ada (3) has never been a sound sleeper, and she goes through phases when she is not sleeping well, and now it is worse than ever. i am so exhausted i can hardly type, yet Max is fully awake, of course :LOL

After about one hour of falling asleep she starts tossing and turning and cry out or whine in her sleep, but getting herself awake in the process. i usually just (when i am making an effort) touch her and say 'i am here, all is okay, you can sleep now', and in less than a minute she quiets down. then 5 minutes later the same thing happens again. this lasts for about an hour, and repeats itself 3 times during the night.

then an hour before sunrise she wakes up and whines quietly and basically waits to be nursed, as she nurses 'only at day light'.

she does NOT go to bed hungry.

i think she might be having nightmares, as this last night she kept saying 'you woke up my teddy bear' and getting upset over it. she also complains of being cold, so i need to adjust her t-shirt etc.

i am a bad night time parent -- if i am half asleep i can be nasty and hiss at her to just go back to sleep, especially as i am anxious about her waking up max (we are in the family bed). i try not to do it, and this past night i was very zen about it.

anyone with similar experiences? what can i do about it? i am thinking like DRUGS :LOL (for either of us?)

i haven't been this exhausted in a long time. and the worst part, dh won't be home till after 11PM, and i am not sure i can even manage for them to nap at the same time, and then it is not a guarantee i can nap with them either. i feel like i won't make it through the day, being so tired.

[findingMYway]

I wish I had some advice but we are going through the same thing right now. Our 2 year old often wakes crying at night and is night weaned also. Wakes in the morning crying for milk-milk. I am shushing her to not wake our 11 month old who also shares our bed. She does wake often at night. Sometimes more than the baby. Was never a good sleeper either. Even when she was nursing at night she was not content and good at sleeping.

I can't think of one thing that has worked for us. I keep trying to tell myself it will pass, as I nudge my 5 year old off my feet. Yes, the 5 year old keeps coming into the bed too. It would be fine if they would all sleep but they move around and whine and I am tired too!

I actually woke this morning with the 5 and 8 year old in bed with me. The baby was between the 5 and year old and our 2 year old was between me and my husband. Crazy kids!

I will be watching this thread to see if anyone can be of help to you.

[stafl]

If it were my kid, I'd nurse her. If that calms her down, you know what is wrong is that she wasn't ready to be nightweaned.
It could be allergies, too. But I'd try nursing first. If nursing doesn't solve the problem, then I'd look into food allergies and environmental allergies. Talk to your child about what is going on, ask her what's wrong, tell her she isn't in trouble, you just want to know so you can help.


(let me know if you want this thread moved to Family Bed and Nighttime Parenting forum, or just cross-post over there. I think you'd get more replies in that forum than this one.)

[**guest**]

stafl --
i posted a similar thread there a month of so ago, and did not get much in response. it is up to you, you know better.

about nursing -- she has cavities, and i know that they were not caused by nursing, i still feel better if she does not nurse at night. she nightweaned easily when i was pregnant.

also, she sleeps MUCH BETTER after we nightweaned. she was nursing every hour, and did not sleep well at all for the first 2 years and 4 months of her life. right now these are cycles -- she goes for weeks,even months sleeping through the night, and then she has a week or two of restless sleep.

i heard that nightmares come in cycles too, but i am not sure. she does not remember waking at night. i talk to her, and all she remembers waking up in the morning.

i never thought about allergies. but in terms of her diet she does not have sugar or dyes. would allergies come and go like this? she does have viral induced asthma, but she has not had a cold in ages, and she has not other symptoms, and her colds never correlate with sleep issues.

even if she did not have cavities, i would be nervous nursing her at night -- we simply can't go to hourly nursings. she nurses the first thing in the morning, and before we brush her teeth at night, and she nurses A LOT During the day. if she were a child to nurse once or twice a night, i would go back to night nursing even with cavities. but what if she starts nursing like before? : this won't help her sleep at all.

thanks so much for your response.

[partymoo]

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[G&B'sMama]

It sounds a lot like night terrors to me too. Night terrors are basically the same problem as sleep walking- and if either thing runs in your family your children are more likely to have them. It is a sleep phase disorder- meaning that every time a sleeping person shifts into REM sleep the brain doesn’t turn off the body like it should. So there is a lot of physical movement accompanied by very vivid dreams. I experience this myself and it really is an odd state of consciousness. Night terrors tend to come on in cycles- so you have them for a while and then they can go away. DD has gone through some really terrible bouts with night terrors. Here are some things you might try:

Look at the sleeping temperature- too hot or too cold can make a NT more likely.
Try to have as relaxed and ritualized bedtime as possible- this helps train the body
If you can squeeze in a quick massage that is a great, calming ritual
Try to avoid anything stimulating before bedtime- this may vary by child and house but things to consider are food consumption, TV/Videos, activity level, etc.
Food is really something big for our DD- when she eats late she gets the worst NT, and we started offering dessert after lunch instead of dinner- we don’t feed much sugar but even so it makes a big difference for her.
Aroma therapy works wonders- we used to put her in a lavender, chamomile bath and put a drop of essential oil of lavender on her night light.

When she has NT there really isn’t anything we can do about it- most of the time she doesn’t know we are even there. On the occaison that she wakes up in the middle of one she gets very confused and upset.

[Marsupialmom]

It could be night terrors but also check for pin worms.