Need Advice RE: DD's Sleeping Habits

[scanne]

DD is 15 months old and all of a sudden her sleeping habits have changed - for the worse!

She is still going to bed around the same time each night (8.30pm) but has been waking up at midnight ready to party! No matter what DH and I do, she refuses to go back to sleep. I've tried:

rocking her
singing lullabies
giving her warm milk
rubbing her back
leaving her in her crib - which just produces the worst crying/screaming fits I've ever heard from her!

The last resort was bringing her into our bed, but our DS still sleeps with us (a habit we were hoping NOT to create with DD) so my DH brought her into our DS's bed (which he never sleeps in) and she fell asleep in there. 2 nights in a row. One of us stayed with her and there are bed rails on the bed.

So is this a horrible thing? I need my sleep and I'm feeling the lack of it really hard the last 2 days. I'm even planning on bringing her right into DS's bed tonight from the start and see if she'll sleep straight through that way.

Any advice is welcome!!! Thank you.

I'm so tired I can't see straight. Good thing for WaWa coffee...(if you don't have a WaWa near you, it's like Circle K, 7 11, Store 24 in Boston, those types of places).

 

[holycow]

I'm not an expert here but I feel your pain after having 3 kids and now we have a newborn...so here goes with my take on the situation....

First off how old is DS? and he is still sleeping with you....DD even though is very young may know that hey the place to be is in bed with mom and dad!

I think you do what the nanny does...you go in and change her if she needs it ...tell her she is fine and put her back to bed. When she cries go in every few min. or so....let her know she is fine and put her back to bed...maybe put on some very quiet music. This may take a couple of nights BUT...it may save you in the long run with all the other things you've been going through with her(singing etc...). Just be firm....you are the parents!

I don't drink coffee but Diet coke is the only thing that gotten me through the days lately!!!

Holycow

 

[aprilgail2]

My daughter used to do the same thing... I ended up keeping her awake until 11pm and then putting her to bed and she would sleep until the next morning when I had to get up for work...to this day she does not sleep like a lot of other kids, she will go to bed at 10 and be up at 630 with me for school and be fine all day. Her Dr just said "some kids need more sleep than others, and yours doesn't seem to need to much " LOL...but keeping her up later as atoddler worked wonders!

 

[goofy4tink]

Do not let her into bed with you!!! My 12 y/o thinks that's the greatest thing since sliced bread still. Try to get your ds out of your bed. As far as your dd goes...she probably slept in ds's bed because someone was there with her. If she wakes up at night and you go to her and try all those things...she is getting exactly what she wants...attention. So, let her be for awhile before going in to her. Then, when you do go in, check her out to make sure diapers are dry etc. Then give her a kiss and tell her to go back to sleep and leave. If/when she starts again, let her be for 20 minutes, then go check on her...do not talk to her, do not touch her...just check in on her and leave. If it continues..let 15 mins go by and do the same thing. and so on. Yes it's a pain but in a few nights she will realize that you are not going to get up and amuse her...she will put herself back to sleep. That's what you should be aiming for...her having the ability to put herself back to sleep. My dd had some awful sleep issues and still, at 12, has some yet to solve. She has a hard time falling asleep at night...unless she is sleeping with me. That is soooo old at this point. She gets to do that on a Sat. night as a big treat. You could get the Ferber book about solving your child's sleep problems. It did help us. Good luck.

 

[Mermaid02]

I know why you are thinking about bring the baby to bed with you- but don't do it! I just got my 8 year old son out of our bed about 3 months ago!!! It was a strain on our marriage and sanity. NOBODY slept good.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

I would go ahead and break both of them of the habit and get it over with. Create a plan that both you and DH agree on and stick to it.

Once the kids see your mind is made up and no turning back that pretty much will be it.

 

[Miss Inga Depointe]

What is her nap situation? It may be time to cut back or eliminate. She may just not be tired enough.

 

[scanne]

What is her nap situation? It may be time to cut back or eliminate. She may just not be tired enough.

I had thought about this as well and asked her day care provider to try and keep her up in the afternoon. Yesterday she napped for 2 hours in the morning and almost 2 hours in the afternoon, plus a 20 minute snooze in the car on the way home.

I'll have to sit down with DH and have a heart to heart about putting DS in his bed and finding a way to get DD to sleep through the night again.

Any more advice is welcome!

 

[Minnie824]

Try putting her to bed earlier. My DD is 18 mos and sleeps from 7pm-7am. She did around that age go thru a phase with her pacifier, where she'd wake up and throw it out of her crib, and all others, and throw her blanket, but I picked it up, gave it back to her, and left. It went on a couple of weeks, then she started sleeping. Is she getting molars in? Sometimes the teeth could be bothering her. Maybe try some tylenol before bed. Also, not sure what she has in her crib now, but try giving her a blankie or stuffed animal or something too. Good luck!

 

[Frantasmic]

You definitely need to be a united front (both parents) in getting kids to sleep in their own bed. Both have to be prepared to face a few nights of reduced sleep.

Get a routine for the older one, start it, and keep to it. Read, put a bottled water next to the bed and insist he stay there when the routine is complete. Anticipate all sorts of stall tactics and have an answer for him right there (kleenix on the nightstand, anything that you think he might ask for or has asked for) Alternate nights doing this until he falls asleep in his own bed. He must not get up out of bed once the routine has been completed.

For the younger one, experts suggest going in there without turning on the lights, tucking her back in to bed, patting her, and leaving for 10 minutes at a time. Increase this time each night. Never turn on the light, never raise your voice, keep it calm, dark, and "nighttime" in her room.

It might take 10 days to 2 weeks, which is agonizing, but it beats 8 years in the same bed with you which is about how long a kid will stay if you don't do something earlier.

 

[Kermit]

That is a long nap. You may want to try changing it a few times and just see what happens.

I know the conventional wisdom is that a baby who has a hard time falling asleep is overtired and should have been in bed earlier and/or had a longer nap. I'm not sure how it applies to babies who won't stay asleep.

My 2 yo DS started waking up frequently when he was just a bit younger than that. I finally realized that he was growing so quickly that he needed some good food that would stay in his tummy for a while just before bed. We tried a few things and finally settled on whole milk yogurt. That worked really well, and I've suggested it to a few other moms here who also said it worked for them. The fat and protein in it makes it stay in the tummy for a long time, but because yogurt is so easily digested, it doesn't require so much energy to digest that it keeps the baby awake. We started at about 1, and now he'll be 3 in a few months, and he still eats his yogurt right before bed. My 14 month old has insisted on yogurt as well for the past two nights, so I guess we're starting the same tradition with him. Before we settled on yogurt, we also tried toasted cheese sandwiches on whole wheat bread, and that worked just as well with keeping him asleep, but yogurt is just easier to feed when you're curled up in a rocking chair, and when he was done eating, we just rocked him to sleep.

Good luck! Sleeping problems are hard on everybody. My strongest advice would be to keep your priorities in order. If you don't want to do something for a long time, don't try it. If it's something that's a bit unusual but it's more important that you get your sleep, go ahead and try it. If you want a book with a lot of suggestions, The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantly is awesome.

 

[Miss Inga Depointe]

I had thought about this as well and asked her day care provider to try and keep her up in the afternoon. Yesterday she napped for 2 hours in the morning and almost 2 hours in the afternoon, plus a 20 minute snooze in the car on the way home.

Take it from an old mother (that sounds not so right, does it? ), here's your problem. If you can get her on a new schedule in which she at least gives up one of the naps, she'll sleep better at night. She's just a little messed up right now with her sleep, like we get, if we take a nap in the middle of the day and can't sleep at night.

There may be a couple of cranky mornings or afternoons at first, but it will a work out in the end.

 

[Ava83]

She is napping tons, but I always noticed with my DD that sometimes
right before she did something developmentaly big she would wake up on us and be up and ready to go for a few days.

and WOW is she a good napper. DD3 has stopped them for the most part.

 

[scanne]

It is Friday morning and DD slept in HER crib the WHOLE night! 9pm to now - it's almost 6am. I hear her stirring so she's probably starting to wake up. She did NOT nap in the afternoon yesterday - just a 10 minute snooze in the car on the way home. We gave her a bath at 8.15pm then a warm bottle and I rocked her and put her in her crib. She started fussing some around 11.30pm, but neither DH nor I went in and she fell back to sleep within 5 minutes.

I am hoping THIS wasn't a phase and that she repeats it tonight!

Now we can tackle getting DS out of our bed...we're working on it!

 

[Miss Inga Depointe]

It is Friday morning and DD slept in HER crib the WHOLE night! 9pm to now - it's almost 6am. I hear her stirring so she's probably starting to wake up. She did NOT nap in the afternoon yesterday - just a 10 minute snooze in the car on the way home. We gave her a bath at 8.15pm then a warm bottle and I rocked her and put her in her crib. She started fussing some around 11.30pm, but neither DH nor I went in and she fell back to sleep within 5 minutes.

I am hoping THIS wasn't a phase and that she repeats it tonight!

Now we can tackle getting DS out of our bed...we're working on it!

Good morning! And congratulations!