Toddler Sleep Challenges - Night Terrors, Up at 4 AM and more

[tammylc]

DS is 17 months old. Most of the time, bedtime is great - we follow our routine and can then just lie DS down in his bed and he falls asleep on his own. That part is wonderful!

But he's still waking frequently throughout the night, and then he won't resettle without nursing (or heavy duty intervention by DH - bouncing, walking, music, etc for a long time). We've had periods where things got better and we were getting a 4-5 hour stretch at the beginning of the night, but we've been shifting back towards 2-3 hours lately. We tried nightweaning 3 months ago, but it didn't "stick" and I thought we should wait and try again when he was older.

Other problems: several times a week, we'll have nights where most of his night wakeups are him screaming (as opposed to crying or whimpering or something). We think it might be night terrors, but he's fairly easy to comfort back to sleep, so we're not sure. Anyone have experience to share with this?

Our other big challenge right now is that he's frequently waking up at 3 or 4 am and being unable to fall back to sleep, even with nursing. He's tired - we've tried just getting up with him, but it's not like he wants to play - he wants to be held and sleep, but just can't seem to get there. After an hour or two of walking and reading etc, he might finally fall asleep nursing, but we can't keep this up! Anybody else have experience with an insomniac toddler?

We are cosleeping, but recently gave DS his own mattress adjacent (but a little bit lower) to ours. That's been working well, and in the beginning we all got much better sleep. But now these latest difficulties have popped up (and don't seem to be much affected by whether he's in the big bed or his bed).

Anyway, just looking for any ideas, advice, experiences anyone wants to share. My husband keeps bugging me to post this here - I think he's looking for a magic bullet, but I know there isn't one to be found!

[MisfitMama]

Well, I don't know how helpful I'll be. . . I can just say my ds is 29 months or something and still wakes usually 3-5 times per night to nurse. I find that when it has gotten "worse" it's usually because of teething or a growth spurt, and it usually passes within a couple of weeks, except this last time with a growth spurt AND two-year molars. . . it's been crazy for 6 weeks, but it's finally getting better again. I actually found that putting ds back in the middle of dh and I has been very helpful! I had him next to us on a futon and it just made me have to wake up more fully before i nursed him.

As far as waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep - that has happened a few times and then it's just gone away. So, I'm probably not helpful there.

As far as "night terrors" - my ds had this (mostly during his naps, though) for over a year. We finally took him to a cranio-sacral therapist who worked on him and also had us change our diets with IMMEDIATE results. It turns out he was having trouble digesting grains and I guess it was giving him gas or something (I've also heard of gas causing frequent night waking, etc.) so you might want to look into the grain-soaking. I learned about it in a book called _Nourishing Traditions_ by Sally Fallon; there is also some online info at http://www.westonaprice.org/index.html but the website info might not look as convincing - I know I blew it off until I read the book! Anyway, give it a try. It's actually fun to soak grains, and no trouble at all.

You can also try a cranio-sacral therapist for frequent night-waking. . . sometimes they can detect something you can't, like teething, digestion troubles, blood flow problems, etc. etc.

Good Luck!

MisfitMama :banana

[zonapellucida]

Oh thank you for this info! My 30 month old still wakes and we have ddealt wiht night terrors. The dr's were no help! I di tons of research and am still waking up a few times wiht her. Add her 8 mtonh old brother and a new baby on the way it is no wonder I am becoming the village idiot.

[fly-mom]

My dd went through a period of frequent night-terrors. Sometimes we could wake her, but usually she was impossible to wake. She seemed like she was awake, and would even respond to questions, but she wasn't it's really kind of creepy and hard to describe.

I did a lot of reading about it and found it often suggested that night-terrors are more common when kids are over-tired. I have found from experience that this is definitley the case with my dd. When she would miss a nap and get over-stimulated she would find it hard to settle down. Those nights were usually terrible with night terrors (sometimes multiple times in a night). When she was well rested night-terrors were non existant.

Luckily she has either outgrown this now, or is generally more well rested, because they don't happen at all anymore (she is 2.5 yo).

[MisfitMama]

I did a lot of reading about it and found it often suggested that night-terrors are more common when kids are over-tired. I have found from experience that this is definitley the case with my dd. When she would miss a nap and get over-stimulated she would find it hard to settle down. Those nights were usually terrible with night terrors (sometimes multiple times in a night). When she was well rested night-terrors were non existant.


Yes, this was often the case with ds, too. Or other factors are being overheated or having a meltdown right before bed. However, you can't always prevent all of these things! Especially when you have a kid who doesn't fall asleep in cars. So we approached it from a variety of angles.

MisfitMama :eek