Need help - toddler waking multiple times a night

[LovinLiviLou]

Ok - I need your help! Our dd is 2 1/2 and we recently transitioned her to her own bed, though she is always welcome in ours (if she asks, we put her there, be it the middle of the night or going to bed). I always lay down with her while she's falling asleep (same as we did when she was in our bed all the time), so that's not been an issue. The problem is for the last 3 or 4 nights, she wakes up at midnight, at 3 and at 5. She hasn't been asking to get in our bed - she just wants us to lay down with her. DH and I usually alternate, but she's seeming to want me more than not. And I'm just flat worn out. When the alarm goes off at 5:30 (which I usuallly hear from dd's room!) for me to get up and go to work, it is torture.

I would just say let's go back to cosleeping all the time, but she is somewhat of a bedhog (think sleeping position of an outstretched snow angel!), and I am 7 months pregnant, and there is just not enough room in the bed for all of us to actually get any substantial amount of sleep. Plus, I have no idea how we'd add a newborn to that equation in 2 months. So - any ideas? I have No-Cry Sleep Solution, and I've tried all that. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated from this sleep deprived mom. TIA!

[mom2owen1]

What about moving her bed or another twin size mattress into your room? She may find this is close enough to you to stop waking. Plus she wouldn't be invading on your space.

Kris
owen, 16 months
edd 10/14

[airlie]

Dear Lovin,

I wish I had an answer for you; I don’t, however I am struck by how similar our situation is. My daughter is also 2.5, same previous co-sleeping arrangement as you, and currently she is in her own bed on her own volition. I’m expecting a baby in about 3 weeks.

The last few nights she has woken-up at 2-3am and is ready to start her day. We don’t let her, of course, so in her case, she wants Daddy to come sleep with her, but she can’t go back to sleep. Last night was the worst. She woke at 2am and Daddy and I traded-off at 4am trying to get her to sleep. She just couldn’t sleep. She tried every trick in the book: needing to pee and poop, needing a snack, needing water. (We allow her one of each of these and then no more.) At one point I let her try to get to sleep on her own, said she had to stay in bed lying down, thought it was working, and then peeked in to see her in bed, in the dark, sitting-up and playing with specks of light on her hands.

Maybe it is a kind of two year old insomnia brought on by their excitement over the new baby coming?

My daughter has NEVER slept past 8am and here it is 10am on a Sat and she is still out. She finally crashed with my “help” around 5am this morning. It felt cruel. I finally had to physically hold her lying down in bed for an hour for her to fall asleep with her crying and trying to get up most of that time, but life just won’t work with a busy two year old awake at 3am. (For those of you stronger willed mothers out there, I did try this earlier in the night as well, but after an hour she was still awake and I thought I should try another tactic.)

We’re thinking of trying lots of exercise during the day and possibly skipping nap time since she seems to want to push through them too much of the time. We are also in the middle of potty training. So, lots of complicating factors. I just feel like such a wimp. I feel like, if I were just firm enough, she would give-up on being awake and sleep, but you know insomnia doesn’t work like that in adults. Why would it in children?

Best of luck. Let me know if anything works.

-Airlie

[LovinLiviLou]

I'm a horrible mother, but I'm posting this followup (and admitting my horribleness) in case it helps others. So, it turns out the reason DD was waking up is that she had an ear infection. There were NO other signs - she didn't say anything about pain (and she's capable of communicating pain - we know!), no tugging on the ears, nothing. She did have a cold 2 weeks ago, and obviously this was brought on by leftover fluid in the ears, but I didn't even think of that at all because she'd been so normal/fine during the days and the cold seemed like forever ago. So, anyway, good news is hopefully we're on to healthier days and nights. Bad news is that my poor dd suffered this long without us figuring it out.

[LovinLiviLou]

I'm a horrible mother, but I'm posting this followup (and admitting my horribleness) in case it helps others. So, it turns out the reason DD was waking up is that she had an ear infection. There were NO other signs - she didn't say anything about pain (and she's capable of communicating pain - we know!), no tugging on the ears, nothing. She did have a cold 2 weeks ago, and obviously this was brought on by leftover fluid in the ears, but I didn't even think of that at all because she'd been so normal/fine during the days and the cold seemed like forever ago. So, anyway, good news is hopefully we're on to healthier days and nights. Bad news is that my poor dd suffered this long without us figuring it out.