Two year old sleep doom
Feb. 22nd, 2012 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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plan_surviveLast I posted I think we were at the beginning of an almighty push to move house.
So, we moved house. And that was OK (actually horrendous, but never mind). And somehow, either by coincidence or not, our son's bedtime went to hell.
V is 25 months. The last good routine we had was about 4 months back, where he would have a long nursing session at about 8 or 8:30pm, and would be put in his cot dreamy and drift off to sleep. But not any more.
Our current routine is this:
5pm: childcare pickup (4 days a week)
5pm to 6pm: hang out waiting for other parent to come home
6pm to 7pm: more hanging out with excited toddler who now has TWO PARENTS
7pm to 8pm: bath, teeth brushing
8pm to 8:30pm: nursing (on and off, I don't have the milk supply now for a 30 minute feed)
And then at 8:30pm we have a SUPER AWAKE little guy again. He lies in the dark with a parent and giggles, chats to himself, kicks his legs around, listens for buses, etc etc. He seems happy enough and he doesn't seem to especially want to continue nursing, even (although he wouldn't refuse if I offered), he just wants to play from 8:30 to at least 9:30 and often 10:30. If the parent leaves, he howls and follows them throughout the house.
Sometimes, about one night in three, he insists on both parents.
This is pretty annoying! We don't have a lot of free time in our day and spending two hours at night lying next to playful V is sort of sweet, but also means we've been living in our new place for a month and haven't unpacked half of it yet. (It also means we eat dinner at about 11 many nights.)
We seem to have the basics down, ie a fairly standard nighttime routine. It isn't 100% regimented but it never needed to be previously.
Additional stuff we've tried once or twice and was really hard:
1. earlier bedtime (7:30pm). One night this worked. The next time he just cried next to a parent for three hours rather than two and slept at 10:30 anyway.
2. talking to him about bedtime. He understands, kind of (his toys lie down and go to sleep a lot), but it doesn't seem to have changed much.
3. calmly putting him back in bed alone every time he got himself up. This was an utter disaster. He got up, I kid you not, fifty times and walked himself all the way down our stairs each time. (Moreover each time his face was so hopeful and relieved because he FOUND MAMA.) He eventually went to sleep when I went and lay with him anyway. So that was a one-night trial and I gave up.
If this hadn't been going on for four weeks I'd call it a sleep regression, but it has been, and now I call it a problem.
Anything I'm missing? Ideally stuff that doesn't involve forcing him to go sleep alone and howling. I have no idea how we could force him anyway, he can open doors and get himself on and off beds and so on. And to put it in Ask Moxie's terms, he's never been one for tension-releasing by crying, definitely a tension-increaser.
One possibility is that his nap is too long or too late: he can still nap for 2 hours at home with me. On the other hand, his childcare naps are 1 hour starting at 12:30, and he's no easier to get to sleep after a childcare day.
So, we moved house. And that was OK (actually horrendous, but never mind). And somehow, either by coincidence or not, our son's bedtime went to hell.
V is 25 months. The last good routine we had was about 4 months back, where he would have a long nursing session at about 8 or 8:30pm, and would be put in his cot dreamy and drift off to sleep. But not any more.
Our current routine is this:
5pm: childcare pickup (4 days a week)
5pm to 6pm: hang out waiting for other parent to come home
6pm to 7pm: more hanging out with excited toddler who now has TWO PARENTS
7pm to 8pm: bath, teeth brushing
8pm to 8:30pm: nursing (on and off, I don't have the milk supply now for a 30 minute feed)
And then at 8:30pm we have a SUPER AWAKE little guy again. He lies in the dark with a parent and giggles, chats to himself, kicks his legs around, listens for buses, etc etc. He seems happy enough and he doesn't seem to especially want to continue nursing, even (although he wouldn't refuse if I offered), he just wants to play from 8:30 to at least 9:30 and often 10:30. If the parent leaves, he howls and follows them throughout the house.
Sometimes, about one night in three, he insists on both parents.
This is pretty annoying! We don't have a lot of free time in our day and spending two hours at night lying next to playful V is sort of sweet, but also means we've been living in our new place for a month and haven't unpacked half of it yet. (It also means we eat dinner at about 11 many nights.)
We seem to have the basics down, ie a fairly standard nighttime routine. It isn't 100% regimented but it never needed to be previously.
Additional stuff we've tried once or twice and was really hard:
1. earlier bedtime (7:30pm). One night this worked. The next time he just cried next to a parent for three hours rather than two and slept at 10:30 anyway.
2. talking to him about bedtime. He understands, kind of (his toys lie down and go to sleep a lot), but it doesn't seem to have changed much.
3. calmly putting him back in bed alone every time he got himself up. This was an utter disaster. He got up, I kid you not, fifty times and walked himself all the way down our stairs each time. (Moreover each time his face was so hopeful and relieved because he FOUND MAMA.) He eventually went to sleep when I went and lay with him anyway. So that was a one-night trial and I gave up.
If this hadn't been going on for four weeks I'd call it a sleep regression, but it has been, and now I call it a problem.
Anything I'm missing? Ideally stuff that doesn't involve forcing him to go sleep alone and howling. I have no idea how we could force him anyway, he can open doors and get himself on and off beds and so on. And to put it in Ask Moxie's terms, he's never been one for tension-releasing by crying, definitely a tension-increaser.
One possibility is that his nap is too long or too late: he can still nap for 2 hours at home with me. On the other hand, his childcare naps are 1 hour starting at 12:30, and he's no easier to get to sleep after a childcare day.
