Sleep!

[ailbhe]

Rob brought Linnea up to bed this evening, and returned her to bed four times in total, repeating "Nighttime, time for bed." It took 25 minutes for her to stop crying and fall asleep.

That's five minutes less than last night.

We can survive this, all three of us, and in the end it will be better. It will, won't it?

(I chose the phrase because staying in bed is an attainable goal; going to sleep may not be).

Comments

[arky72.livejournal.com]

We always put Jonnie to bed with the intention of him staying there - when he falls asleep we don't seem to have any control over! Andy went in last night to check on him when he went to bed at 1.30am and Jonnie was sitting up playing in the dark!

You are doing really well :D

[the-warwick.livejournal.com]

Once Rhiannon got used to it she decided that sleep was about the best thing she could get on with. Returning to comfort silently at ever decreasing intervals seemed to speed things up. I've had to accept that I get less time with her because it is *important* that she is heading to bed as soon after 7pm as possible.

We use stickers for various things. Being good at bedtime is one of those things. We've not used stickers for going to sleep quickly and quietly for a while but it did happen.

Rob doing it was probably a very good idea. She knows she can't feed to sleep from him. Breaking the nursing to sleep was probably one of our harder jobs.

[ailbhe]

It's the first time we've managed this with Rob doing it; he usually gives up and cuddles her or takes her downstairs to watch TV. Short-term pain for long-term gain isn't one of his things.

Nursing to sleep was broken ages ago as a *necessity* but it was by far the easiest way to do it for a long time.

[merryhouse.livejournal.com]

oddly enough, that was one of the easiest bits for us - with both boys.

Christopher basically did it himself - he'd been sucking for a while before coming off and turning over for some weeks, and eventually we reached the point where he would latch on, wriggle into position, give one suck and come off again. At that point (about 30-31 months) it was easy, especially as his communication skills were advanced, to say "when you go into your own room [ie once it's been painted and had a bed put in] this will stop, yes?" Rob put him to bed that first time, with me coming up for a kiss, and everything was fine.

He still woke several times in the night, mind. He was squawking at an advanced stage in my pregnancy. In fact, this didn't stop till round about the time he came out of nighttime nappies. Hmm.

Oliver was quite different. At almost 33 months he'd been sleeping all night for most nights for some weeks but was still doing a definite nurse to start off. I was beginning to think we were going to have to Work Hard at it (yike!), but then at Christmas while we were at my dad's house Rob took him up to bed. As things seemed to be going well I allowed it to continue without interruption, and simply went in and said goodnight after Rob left the room. Oliver lay quite happily for a while and then went to sleep.

We were Stunned.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Yes, you'll survive it and in the end it will be better.

It sounds like this radical approach is what's needed at this point in things, but once you're at a better bedtime state, you might consider figuring out ways to develop a bedtime routine that she looks forward to rather than fighting. We've gone through big bedtime fighting times with Liam, but now he excitedly recites the next steps of his routine and goes to sleep peacefully and happily most nights. It does take us most of an hour, all told, but we trade off various tasks.

We had a well established routine before, but then something changed for Liam and he started fighting sleep. Our way of resetting things was to do a really radical change of the routine - we changed order of events, location of things, added a timer to his bath, etc. He's gone from being the kid who'd yell "No sleep!" when he saw pictures of sleeping children in books, to being a kid who loves to "play nap" and tuck his babies in to bed.

[ailbhe]

Oh, the rest of the bedtime routine is fine, has been down pat for ages - it's just the staying-in-bed-until-asleep part we've not done. Ever.

Linnea loves to play sleep, and has done for ages. She tucks everyone up - teddy, donkey, horsey, rabbit, doggie, Mammy, 'Nea - and says nightnight sleeptight and closes her eyes and snores. It's only at bedtime she won't do it.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

The rest of our bedtime routine was trooping along fine as well, it was just taking longer and longer every night to get him to stay in bed, relax and fall asleep, and it was becoming more and more of a fight. Doing the radical shake-up of the whole routine seemed to help break that pattern without causing a huge battle.

And who knows, maybe he would have reached this point on his own without any changes - it's so hard to know what's developmental and what's environmental.

[(Anonymous)]

Yup, "bed" rather than "sleep" is definitely more of an attainable goal. YoungBloke will talk and sing to his cuddlies for ages after I've left the room these days.

The end result will be better. It's hard now, but it will be better.