[sozobe]

Just wanted to agree with Iguanavere re: not napping -- dd has almost completely given up naps (well, naps maybe 20% of the time) and she goes to sleep much more easily, sleeps more soundly, and sleeps longer after a no-nap day. If you put your child to bed before you go to sleep, you can probably push back the bedtime to make up the break. (I mentioned before that we all go to sleep at the same time and I have my break in the morning.)

At any rate, I have found that she sleeps the same amount of time either way -- 9-10 hrs overnight plus a 2 hr nap, for a total of 11-12 hours, OR 11-12 hours overnight -- so you don't actually have less time, it's just redistributed.

 

[EllasMama]

What gets me about the whole sleep issue is that just when I think we're onto some great improvement, kaboom, something happens that throws us back to chaos. Part of it is that we're moving in 2 weeks and life is crazy. Part is that *I* am not very good at keeping a schedule of always eating at the same time, going to bed at the same time, etc. But I swear part of it must have something to do with the way the wind is blowing a certain day. Then I feel doubly bummed b/c I thought whatever issue had been resolved. Ha! I think the common theme of having a spirited child is that just when you get optimistic and think you might be a step ahead...you find yourself behind once again, scratching your head and wondering what happened.

Here is one idea I thought was great that came from an experienced mom: I'm working on getting DD to fall asleep on her own by shortening the time I spend with her at night and at naps. So instead of lying with her till she falls asleep (after the other parts of our routine), I've been getting up while she's still awake, shortening the interval of how long I lie there. Lately
she is getting into a pattern of getting out of bed after I leave and yelling for me basically as many times as I'll come back. Not a cool habit to teach her I'll run back upstairs 6 or 8 times. So this mom suggested what she did with her daughter, which was telling her, "I'm going to leave the room now, but I'll come back in 10 minutes and check on you." Then she would always follow through, but not give in to demands for her to come back before 10 minutes. Unless it was urgent, of course. 5 minutes might be better with some kids, and of course my DD is 2.5 years old and can understand this concept fairly well - it might not be appropriate for young kids. I tried it for the first time last night, it wasn't immediately successful but I have hope it will be a good longterm tool. I think my daughter calls for me to come back b/c she feels lonely and doesn't know when/if I'll come back. Letting her know I will be back in 10 minutes and following through will take away the worry of whether I'll be back, so I think it will help once she gets used to it.

Carol

 

[JessicaSpalding]

OMG, where have you ladies been? I thought I was the only one! I have talked to other mothers, posted a little here, but now I know that I have a SLEEP FIGHTER. Maybe she's spirited, too, I don't know what the definition is.

Don't take this the wrong way, Breathe, but I would kill for a 45 minute bedtime. It takes me (and sometime DH) 3 to 6 HOURS to get my dd to sleep. That's after dinner and after the bath. And she won't take a pacifier or her thumb, so she sucks me all night long, AND I can't leave her alone in bed at all. Not for even an hour. I get no breaks, no naps, no movies. I have been doing this for nearly a year and I am just about burned out. I really think I need to do some drastic changes.

I read all of these posts to your e-mail and I thought I was goin to cry. I know now that it won't get better, it wont' just go away. I need to make some real changes. Good to hear about the no nap days, I kept thinking that all those sleep books that talk about lack of naps making for worse sleep at night but it's not really true for DD.

I feel better. And I am also worried now.

Jessica

 

[Breathe]

Hi Jessica, and Welcome to the Sisterhood of Sleep-Deprived Mamas! I'm so sorry you're having such a rough time. That sounds REALLY difficult!

3-6 hours sounds like a problem . . . Do you want to go into more detail to see if anyone here has any ideas? Granted, we're not the most successful bunch of sleep-inducers, but you can bet your booty that we have tried it ALL!

Feel free to vent more, if needed. I hate to think of you sitting out there worrying! (altho it looks like we're in the same town, so you're actually not that far away!)

 

[JessicaSpalding]

Hi Breathe,

I am just catching up on the whole 7 pages of the thread. It took me a while since I don't get to go online that much. I had pretty much given up MDC for advice, for similar reasons that you mentioned in an earlier post. OH, those rants against AP! My favorite thing to say to my husband is "we need to let her cry" or "I am weaning her TOMOROW".

My girl is only 11.5 months old! She can fight sleep like, well, like a toddler! Today she woke up at 8:30am, slept for 30 minutes (in a jogging stroller) and we actually got her to sleep at 7:30. My DH took over at 8:00 and was able to put her down IN BED ALONE until now (10pm). This was such a rare golden evening for me I had a glass of wine. Plus I found this thread!

I had just come to the same point about a rigid schedule maybe working. I had done all the "mistakes" that you had done. Especially sleeping late in the morning. It was hard because of the hypothyroidism (another story) but now I have more energy I need to just wake her up at the same time every d ay.

I am in Durham, where are you?

 

[JessicaSpalding]

D'oh! I forgot I put "Durham" in my profile!

 

[gardenmommy]

Is it too late for me to jump in on this thread? Because I am seriously thinking of investing in some duct tape and ear plugs (duct tape to keep my little one in bed and ear plugs so I can sleep!).

DD (now 21 mo.) has always been so easy to get to sleep. Right from birth she went down every night by 9:30, slept about 4 or 5 hours, nursed, slept 3 hours, nursed, etc. until waking for good around 8 am.

Now, she's decided that sleep is anathema. Why sleep when you can nurse every hour all night long? Why go to sleep when it's so much more fun to play with mom and dad? However, DH and I are exhausted, and cannot deal with her antics.

I am so tired at the end of the day, I cannot deal with all of her wiggling, squirming, sleep-fighting toddlerness. She nurses more now during the night, and is so much harder to get to sleep than she ever was as a newborn.

I decided to nightwean in hopes that that would help her sleep through better, and tried putting her in her own bed at the beginning of the night. Dh even slept alone with her for 3 nights. She slept through, so dh wanted me to come sleep with them again. The fourth night was terrible. All she wanted was to sleep on top of me, nurse, and cry all night long.

I love my dd, but I am really at the end of my rope with her sleep issues. Tonight, I'm trying something different. She is sleeping in ds's room; he's on the top bunk, she's on the bottom. I'm across the hall with the baby monitor. We'll see how this arrangement works.

I think this is a little disjointed, it's late, and I'm really tired.

 

[nuggetsmom]

I tried the "shall I check on you in a few minutes" thing and it WORKED

DD (25 mo) says yes, then calls in daddy if he is home and tells him to get out and come chek on her in afew minutes and it is so cool. I though she would get out of bed, but no.
no crying, no tossing and turning, WOW. I hope it lasts...

And Jessica, I have no advice, just sympathy.
gardenmommy, check out Dr Gordons nightweaning technique. Search google for Dr gordon. Some have had good luck with that.

At christmas we are going to buy DD the coolest kid bed ever and see if she wants to sleep in it in her room.

 

[chevy974]

Well i have been reading this thread for 30 min lol.

And i must say its nice to know i am not hte only mommy who is getting her but kicked trying to put a toodler to bed.

My dd who will be 3 in Dec still doesnt sleep all night and its HELL to get her to sleep. SHe still wants to nurse all night and i notice if i let her nurse to sleep she is up ever couple hours. If i let her fuss kick scream smack bite and finally i leave the room she sleeps better. I have 4 children and i took all them from the time they were babies put them in bed and they slept. I decided I liked AP parenting and for all aspects it seems great but the sleeping just isnt getting it. Dh is finally resulting to sleeping on the couch cause of the kicking issue and tossing and screaming NO NO at thin air.

Nap time she wakes up screaming and wil scream for a 1/2 hour kicking screaming throwing a fit. She has always been what some tell me is a HIgh spirited child. I thik she is in HIGH need of a good spanking lol or atleast thats what my old fashioned mother tells me.

: SHe is down right mean to her siblings and everything has to go her way or we get the GOD wrenching screamming

So it seems alot of the time she gets what she wants so she will just shut up. I like most of you are at my WITS ends and ready to start drinking heavily

. I just plain o ut dont know what to do or how to handle the tantrums the kicking etc but it helped to know i wasnt alone. But my big question is how do i handle a 3 yr old with a BAD attitude how do we undo what we have done

 

[Breathe]

Hey Mamas,

I'm sitting here laughing at myself (it's better than pulling my hair out!) because we are back to sleep troubles and I had this vague recollection of there being a time in our life when I *thought* we had things figured out . . . so I resurrected this thread and YEP! Sure enough, there WAS a time in our life when I thought it was all figured out!

:LOL :LOL :LOL :LOL :LOL :LOL :LOL :LOL

How sad is it that I had to come back to a post from last summer to get good ideas about bedtime -- GOOD IDEAS THAT I HAD ALREADY USED, NO LESS!!!

I declare that I really and truly have lost a big chunk of my brain.

In any case, all these months later, ds is now 27 1/2 months, still being put to sleep in the sling for naps, and still taking up to 75 minutes to fall asleep at night. My house is falling down around me bc dh and I are too damn tired to do any housework after the bedtime marathon.

So there you go. Over two years of motherhood and I've learned really very little other than to be humble, humble, humble.

I hope some of you out there are faring better. Or at least coping as well as possible!

Breathing Deeply,
E.

 

[Shanghaimum]

I am right there with you.... and I hate it. Ds, who is also 27.5 months old, has totally 'regressed' when it comes to sleep. For awhile, a glorious 6 weeks, he was actually going to bed without a fight. Dh would go and lie with him and after about 25-30 minutes he would be asleep and actually sleep all night alone. Now we are back to fighting naps, bedtime takes at least an hour and Dh is back sleeping with him and he is still waking 3-4 times a night.....

Will it ever get better????

But... on the positive side, dd, who is 4 months old, doesn't fight sleep and usually only wakes 1-2 times a night!!!

Emma

 

[kyliew]

Yep, I'm with you both.

My DD is 23 months old and I'd just love her to goto bed one night before midnight. She starts getting tired at about 8-9pm, but she just refuses sleep. She screams, she kicks, she throws big tantrums, and in the mean time I have a 5 month old who happily goes to sleep at 8:30pm and will sleep till 6am. So I spend my whole time trying to get DD to be quiet and goto sleep so she doesn't wake my baby!!

It can't get any worse, only better, right?

 

[momcat]

I am definitely not even THINKING about having another child until ds figures out the sleep thing FOR GOOD. That might mean we wait until he's 15.

Right around his 2nd b'day (he's now 26 mos) he figured out how to sleep through the night and I was ecstatic! Now, however, we're trying to get him into his own bed (still in our room) and we're back to square one. Amazingly, when he is at day care, he not only goes to sleep by himself, but he doesn't use any comfort items to do it, either. AND he sleeps for two hours without waking. What the heck am I doing wrong?! I think there's definitely some sort of positive peer pressure, since the other 2 kids also nap around the same time. Our DCP is very AP, too, so I know she didn't train him to do this via any sort of CIO method.

Hugs, Breathe - I wish I had some words of wisdom, but... well, at least you have my sympathy!

 

[sparkeze]

Wow, I've just spent an hour reading this thread (with a booby-call in there too!) and I need to park here for awhile!

My DS is 21 mo, never been a good sleeper since he was born. I walked and bounced him in a sling until he was about 15 mo for naps and at bedtime. At that point I just couldn't take it anymore so I resigned myself to nursing him to sleep in bed for 2 hrs + for naps and bedtime. It's torture!! He switches back and forth from one side to the other crawling around my body until he rests on top of my head, all while attached to the nipple, and then he gets up and jumps on the bed, climbs off the bed to play with everything and anything available (he gets very creative at this point

: ) and then when I go bring him back to the bed the cycle continues until I wake up and find he fell asleep. I have become sleep-deprived because I crave a few hours alone after DS falls asleep but that means I don't get enough sleep. One plus is that once he's asleep, he generally wakes up about every 2-4 hours, nurses briefly and rolls over and goes back to sleep. That is a major improvement from a year ago...

One thing I've noticed about my DS is that he falls asleep best when he's truly exhausted. That takes a lot though because he's normally very very very active and especially in this below zero weather it's hard to get out much. If I don't put him to sleep for a nap, he doesn't sleep. But I can tell he's really tired and he needs a nap. But if doesn't nap he will usually fall asleep by 8 sometimes 7!

). Am I sleep-depriving him if I just skip the nap and let him stay up? Many days I try for 20 min and if he doesn't look like he's going to fall asleep anytime soon I just give up. It's too frustrating to try to get him to fall asleep for 2 hours only to get all irritated at him because he won't fall asleep.

I'm so glad I found this thread!

 

[Matadora]

Hi, I just had to jump in and say I'm glad this post was reopened too!

Sparkeze: I had thought that my son HAD to have a nap, but he gave them up when he was 18 months and except for the occasional day where he has worn himself out they are a ghing of the past! I don't think you are sleep depriving your child - although my Mom wouldn't agree. My son now goes to bed sometime between 7:30 and 9 (still varies, but I am okay with that) earlier on days he was incredibly active and later on days that were much more lazy. With 9 degree weather here in Michigan and 15 below wind chill we are housebound and consequently night time is a bit later.

As for it getting better... right now we are in a good sleep phase with my son= he will be 3 in less than a week. Most nights he is asleep within 30 minutes of our lying down, which includes reading several books. I have found that the nights I desperately want him to sleep are the nights he refuses, so I have decided to just let whatever happens happen and for some reason that reduces the stress

As for my 8 month old... she fights sleep during the day so much - she is crawling and pulling up and wanting to be a part of everything and so she really doesn't want to sleep. However, by the time she goes to bed at night she is so exhausted that she sleeps for 12 hours straight. Then she takes a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. I'm not going to stress, it's not like she doesn't have the opportunity.

One last note - my brother swears that children who require less sleep are more inquisitive and thereby more intelligent than those who are content to sleep all the time and on a schedule (this is not meant to offend anyone, just to make those of us who are struggling with sleepless children feel better about things). BTW... his son is 23, scored a perfect score on his SAT's and has a full fellowship to Colombia. His daughter is 20, scored a nearly perfect score on her SAT's and is on a full scholarship to a private school here in Michigan. Wouldn't it be nice if he were right?

 

[JessicaSpalding]

Oh Lordy.

Yeah, we are still having sleep issues. She's going to sleep faster and deeper than ever (dd is 15 mo) but she has been waking up for "bowba" every hour or two. And it takes me a while to go to sleep, so just as I am drifting off, she wakes up.

So DH has been putting her down and sleepingwith DD in the living room on a futon. She doesn't wake up nearly as often and he is able to get her back to sleep. BUt I miss her alot!

Well, at least I know that it can still change for the worse. Did you mamas out there that are having tough problems with 23-27 mo olds have problems this early? She has been really hard ever since she was born, but she does seem to be getting better. At least she doesn't take 3 HOURS anymore!

good luck everyone,

Jessica

 

[lilyka]

If you are in a space right now where you LOVE bedtime and appreciate holding and rocking and singing your child to sleep for hours on end because this is such a special time in your life, please don't tell me. I can't take it.

I never enjoyed this after like week three

And I find it to be tedious and BORING AS HELL!!!!

nothing beautiful or magic about it to me

DH and I need a strategic plan for making this better, but GOOD GRIEF, when are we supposed to talk to each other? At 11 PM after ds has finally fallen asleep?!?!

unfortunately desperate time call for desperate measures. Once dh actually had the nerve to say "can we talk about this later. i said sure but you are getting up with her from now on and dealing with her from now on. I am dine and if you aren't home by 9 I am bring her to work dso you can deal with it there. He was suddenly all ears. we had a plan that started right then and there and we never looked back.

Feel sorry for me. Tell me your night-life sux, too. Doesn't suck any more but I have so BTDT and it does totally suck and I admire the complete lack of cuss words in your post

Tell me that you, too, sometimes have fantasies of hunting down Dr. Sears and making him listen to your fingernails on a chalkboard for implying that babies fall asleep when they're tired IF you establish the perfect conditions.

AMEN SISTER. that and when he waxes eteranl about babies know when they need sleep and will bnlissfully drop off to the sleep when they need it and that it is OK to just sit and rock them and hold them in a sling all day. well maybe he can but I have things to do and appreciate a little touch free time in my life.

QUOTE]

 

[MikaelaB]

OMG, I am just googling "I HATE BEDTIME WITH TODDLER"... saw your post. I am currently about ready to lose my mind. My 31/2 year old WILL NOT SLEEP. NEVER HAS!!!! From day one, it has been an issue and it never gets better. It only gets worse and I know, IVE TRIED EVERYTHING. I get to the point where my blood is boiling. I honestly think my blood pressure sky rockets. I don't want it to be a horrible experience every night. I go into it every time with an awareness of how it gets, I try to stay calm and serene and roll with it. Know going into it that it will be hours before Im out of that room with a toddler sleeping in it, and EVERY night, it gets to the point where sometimes I end up yelling. Most nights I end up walking out.... which just makes things worse. OH, and did I mention this is all amplified x100 because I have a two year old, who is a total dream sleeper, who shares a room with my 3 year old, who is just trying to get to sleep among all this talking, and crying and whining.... ugh, I cant stand it. The only thing that works is if I let her sleep in my bed. She goes right to sleep that way. But mostly, the only thing that keeps me from letting her LIVE in my bed if it makes her go to sleep at night, is I feel like it is unfair to her sister. And Im not about to let two littles sleep in my bed before I even get a chance to get in it. (They both join me in the middle of the night and I let them sleep in there, they end up getting the pillows and I lay horizontally at the foot of the bed) As you can see, I have one heck of a problem here. Had to vent also. And by the way, I LOVE my daughter(s)..... Just HATE BEDTIME!!!!!!!!!