bedtime

we have the opposite problem - crashing at bedtime and waking up two hours later not wanting to go back to sleep until 6am. no idea how to fix this.

<Guesses>

Tracer: separation anxiety? Going to bed too early or too late?

SS: Erm, got me stumped there. Does she still have a nap in the day?

Archie only woke once for a feed last night! However, attempts to transition Howie to a duvet and bed have proven disastrous, so we have gone back to sleeping bag and cot. Really have no clue how him in a bed is going to work.

She naps for two hours in the day time. Shes become really clingy lately. Needs one of us with her all the time including when she wakes up in the night. Its kind of killing us.

We tried to get beeps to sleep in a bed too but it didnt work out. I later read that kids under 3 dont have the cognitive ability to understand the imaginary confines of a bed and they subsequently freak out when you put them in one.

well now he woke up three hours after going to sleep. something is definitely up.

TEETH

yeah i think maybe so! exciting

we have the opposite problem - crashing at bedtime and waking up two hours later not wanting to go back to sleep until 6am. no idea how to fix this.

Let her cry. She's old enough. If you can't really do it, you can do it in a roundabout way. Check the clock for ten minutes, then go in, put her in bed and tell her to go to sleep (or even better, say nothing). Repeat ad nauseam. If you can handle it, do longer. Like first ten minutes, then 15 minutes,.... Or you can also sit with her, not saying anything and just wait till she goes to sleep. Trust me, she only does it, because she's "rewarded" (you give her attention, even if you're angry). :-) I know, it's easier said than done. If all else fails, let her sleep in your bed. I know how it is if you're pregnant.

Oh yeah, you're just back, right? I mean, it's only been a week or so, right? Could very well be the fucked up time zone. Some need a long time to adjust.

She's got until Monday and if she's not cured, she's sleeping in the garage.

Really my only problem w/Megan's sleep right now is that our cat goes into her room at 5am and wakes her up with his yowling, and then she usually can't go back to sleep again. If we close her bedroom door he just starts banging on her door during the night, which is even louder than his crying. This cat drives me crazy.

cosign (xp)

I would tell that cat that she's got until Monday and if she's not cured, she's sleeping in the garage.

Sleep training, Round 142

All week, she's been waking up several times through the night, often not going back down for 2-3 hrs. Makes everyone but her irritable. She just wants to play! Teething, yes, but that's been going for months (no teeth yet, tho). Also, practising her new nearly 7-month-old skills, sitting up, grabbing, rolling around, crawling. The only consolation is that after being up all night, she'll have two 2-hr naps throughout the day, and one shorter one.
Last night, almost on a dare, we bumped her bedtime up an hour. Slept straight through, 10.5 hrs. Too early to tell if this fixes everything or is at least a semi-pattern, but cause for great optimism/rest.

To PP: So the garage?

After two weeks of hardcore-cry-it-out sleep training, my 7-month-old daughter sleeps beautifully through the night after 15 minutes or less or tortured crying. Usually it's more like 5 minutes. Howev, her naps have shrunk down to 30 mins and she has developed a terrible separation anxiety. Anytime we leave her in a room, she freaks out. Makes going to the bathroom awful.
otherwise, two teeth in the last week, and she's pulling herself up into standing position.

nath, the kidd slept peacefully for nearly 12 hours last night.

Granted, it was in our bed with her feet in our face, but at least we weren't arguing about whether Wonder Pets was on.

i've found that if we give the big L solids any time after 5pm it makes going to bed @ 7:30 nearly impossible. fwiw.

wow. i find if we dont feed beeps dinner right before the bedtime routine she wakes up at 4am hungry :(

yeah - you know, i am probably just making that up and it's something else entirely. parenthood is like this giant game of making up stories that help you make sense of things. i bet we're right 50% of the time MAX.

(I know there's a photo quarantine thread, but allow me this one transgression... if you want your kids to sleep on a couple of folded duvets on the floor at their nan's, tell them the story about the princess and the pea... NB, may not work with boys)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2480/3727220813_e09e2753d7.jpg

ha!

We have just started Alice's transition from cot to bed, though being poor we have not actually forked out for a bed yet, just removed one side of the cot (which is very low and still plenty long enough for her). First night - found her in the middle of the carpet at 4am, whimpering a bit but still half-asleep. Last night - found her UNDER the bed at 5.30am. I don't think she's been falling out so much as sliding herself off, but is this normal? Should we have got a proper bed with a guard? Or is she just not ready?

We tried this a while ago, when Beeps was a little over 2, but would find her wandering down the hall not knowing where she was or rattling the gate at the top of the stairs at 1am. "They" say you shouldn't make the move until the kiddo is three because they cant grasp the concept of the imaginary walls of a bed yet. Alice must be close to three though. My friend had pretty much instant success with her almost 3 year old by pushing the bed against a wall and using a guardrail. So maybe making them feel as confined as possible is the trick? Let us know how it goes and what works for you guys because weve got to get Beeps out to make way for kid no2 soonishly.

Alice isn't three until December and maybe she does it find it too confusing, although very much likes the *idea* of a big girl bed...

Update: after the first couple of nights A has been a dream with the bed, in fact the only problem now is stopping her from getting in it while she's still fully dressed! Once she worked out that she could get herself up in the morning she was delighted, and will happily play in her room for half an hour before coming to find us.

Woah Nice! Did you do anything differently or was it just a matter of getting used to it?

We didn't do anything different, just kept bunging her in and hoping for the best! She does have a wall on one side of her which I think has helped.

Howie went into his big bed on Saturday! So far so good, apart from a slight confusion about duvets and the use thereof (cue screams at 1am of "Mummy! Mummmeeeee! I WANT IT ON!!!!!!!!!" as one leg is ever so slightly sticking out from under the duvet). And pillows seem to be for sleeping next to, not on:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Q2cuqOo8v8M/SpKMEamSoWI/AAAAAAAAMJc/scOPXA4Kaes/s800/photo.jpg

I'd like one week of uninterrupted sleep. I got two nights of sleep! But last night was just horrendous. I didn't sleep from one till 4. ARGH. When will this stop? I really need my sleep back. :-(

how's it going?

how old are yours again? have they always been trouble at night?

dudes. 5 days of henry sleeping from 10 - 7am. Actually he woke at 5 this morning but he did sleep until 8:30am to make up for it earlier in the week. hes kind of a champ for a 7 week old

Wow you must breed good sleepers!

Sunny, can you come and teach my kids to sleep.

TH, they are 2 and almost four. This night was hellish yet again. First Ophelia woke up for a glass of water. (Not that it matters: I placed a glass next to her bed previously and she just woke up and demanded sth else.) Then Elisabeth woke up several times. She was wide awake: giggling for a good 15 minutes... and then screamfest again. It was two am when I went back to sleep. They woke up at seven. I was so out of it, I nearly ran into a wall. lolz

Ophelia was great until the age of about 2,5. Elisabeth has been a ride in hell since she was born. Actually no, the first three weeks she slept. Then it was hell. lolz but not really

Someone we know recommended this book, but I don't know: http://www.sleepyplanet.com/products/sleepeasy_book.php
The amazon page has endorsements from Greg Kinnear, Ben Stiller and Conan O'Brien! So there's that, haha. We have been incredibly lucky with Sylvie so far -- so much so that I hesitate to even talk about it for fear of jinxing. For the past 2 weeks, she's pretty much been sleeping from 9ish to at least 7am, w/o waking up. She'll make a little noise from time to time, but then falls right back to sleep. She's only 4 months, so teething hasn't even started yet. I expect that'll put an end to these long nights.

Any recommendations on transferring a 5 month old from a swing to a crib? She doing great right nows (generally sleeps from 9:30 pm to 6:30 am), so I don't want to mess anything up. But our pediatrician seems to think that if we wait any longer she'll have a real hard time getting used to it. Also, how old were your kids when they started sleeping in cribs? Part of me wants to wait a few more months because of SIDS concerns.

The boys both went into a big cot around 4 months as they outgrew the little crib we had. I just put 'em in there and hoped for the best (Howie was a terrible sleeper before and after -- Archie pretty much slept through as soon as he went into the cot).

what is a swing??

Talking about these things:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41y39D03GPL._AA400_.jpg

We transitioned her from a bassinet to this around 2 1/2 months, I think. It totally saved our lives at the time. Unfortunately, she immediately wakes up when we try placing her in the crib when she falls asleep. I think she's gotten used to being in a cradled postion while sleeping.

How about something like this in the crib, to make her feel more secure?

Oh yeah, I forgot about those things. We may try that. Thanks!

Wow, I think here they would strongly advise against a swing. For several reasons, mainly because they claim such things are bad for the back. Hell, we can't even use it too long during the day.

ANYWAY bedtime?What the hell is that? This night was a record. Elisabeth was awake and frigging playing in her bed until she had a screamfest. During that time, until 4 AM, Ophelia would come to our bed and demand to sleep with us. I know some would succumb and we have in the past. But 1 it's a bad idea (this night case in point, she is stubborn) and secondly we get no sleep because the bed is too small for three people. Honestly I am trashed beyond belief. Every other day it's more or less like this. Not a week of solid sleep goes by. Maybe once a while we get some sleep, like eight hours. But most of the time one or both wake us up.

Urgh.

Okay, sorry, had to rant and moan. No wonder my sinus infection doesn't go away. My throast is hoarse and my eyes bleary.

Our Alice would never go in a cot. She could be completely zonked, but the very second we transferred her from arms to cot, she'd jump up and yell.

There was a spare normal bed in her room as well, so we put her on that instead (with the cot alongside to prevent fall-out), and that was fine.

I have now resorted to sleeping half an hour (or less if it's doable) with Ophelia... in her bed.

Sunny, can you come and teach my kids to sleep.

nath, beeps slept through from 3 wks with the occasional expected restless teething night etc until she turned two. i think shes slept through the night maybe twice since then and shes turning 3 in less than a month. in the end we caved to cosleeping (her starting in her bed and ending up in ours anywhere between 12-4am). Co-sleeping was probably the only thing we were really against as new parents but when it comes down to getting 2 or less hours sleep a night and the consequent frayed nerves and fights i guess youve just got to go with what keeps you all sane.

also i should say i completely credit all of this infant sleeping to the miracle blanket.

wtf seriously? it seems bizarre that she could suddenly turn around and just not sleep through anymore.

Now that Aidan is in a bed we notice that he often doesn't 'sleep' through. Sometimes we'll get woken up by him shouting 'mummy! mummy! etc. but he'll go back to sleep, some nights (like last night) he'll actually get out of bed and come through to and pat me on the face or hand to wake me up. Just because the parent doesn't wake up doesn't mean the child doesn't. I think when he was in the cot he just settled himself and went back to sleep quicker than he does now he knows he can get out of bed.

i am going to have to learn more patience than i currently possess if my child starts patting me on the f'in FACE while i am trying to sleep

it's kinda cute, he does it ever so gently. Luckily he's happy for me to lead him back to his bed, I give him a quick cuddle then say night night.

Big tip on how to avoid it though - make sure you are sleeping furthest away from the door as they always go for the nearest side. I am kicking myself that I didn't do anything about it before now.

Howie doesn't seem to realise he can actually get out of bed in the night (we put a stair gate across his room just in case!).

He does wake once or twice most nights though, mostly in need of a drink of water or to fish out Igglepiggle from down the side of the mattress. Occasionally he thinks it's cute to pretend to be a kangaroo and kick the side of the bed for half an hour in the middle of the night.