How to stop the night wakings?

On Mar 14, 6:53 am, "deja.blues" wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message

...

On Mar 13, 5:03 pm, "lu-lu" wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message
btw - it's not that I'm making excuses, it's just that I'm trying to
not do a bunch of different things that require substantial effort and
lifestyle change in the hope that _one_ works. Many things we have
tried, and now I'll just take it one by one and see how it goes.

???????
It sounds like great change and effort is exactly what you need to do.


I mean like going to the effort of moving the large awkward difficult
to move bed into another room temporarily in the hopes that it will
make a difference.

First I'll try smaller steps such as moving the crib close to the bed
and removing the 'arms' on it and not moving her when she wakes but
being close by to soothe her. If after some time of this it turns out
that having us in the room *is* the problem, then we'll go to the
hassle of moving our bed to another room for awhile.

Step by step.

On Mar 14, 8:15 am, Rosalie B. wrote:
cjra wrote:
On Mar 13, 6:34 pm, Rosalie B. wrote:
cjra wrote:

Our problem is lack of doors - all the doors have been removed and
sent of for stripping (lead paint removal), . So without doors,

Why does the area have to be quiet?

Lights on, tv (sometimes), computer etc. all within a few feet of her?
Maybe your child can fall asleep with that, mine has never been able
to. All the usual 'house' noises. Frankly I don't expect anyone to be
able to sleep through all that. Perfectly silent? no, but constant
stimulation in the form of lights, talking etc, she can't handle that.

Are you putting her to bed in the living room or something? I would
expect a child to be able to sleep through noise of conversation, but
maybe music or a fan or something would mask that. My DIL does that
(for herself).


I have described the house set up repeatedly, perhaps you missed it.
There are not very many rooms in the house. Every other area is OPEN.
It's a smallish house. There's not some side area to put her, so yeah,
wherever she'd be outside the bedroom would be in a common living
space.

My child does NOT sleep through noise of conversation, no matter how
tired she is. Maybe she's an oddball, but so be it. I never was able
to sleep with commotion either.

How about a crib tent? (I've never seen one, but I envision something
like one of those tings that they put over bird cages to make the
birds shut up and go to sleep. That would take care of the lights.

but not the noise.

Mine of course didn't have the computer to deal with, but I don't
think my computer makes much noise - when dh wants to go to bed before
I do, and I'm still working on the laptop, I may mute it so that it
doesn't make ANY noise.

Once we HAD a TV in the bedroom, I would often go to sleep with it on
- actually now I refuse to have a TV that doesn't have a sleep setting
so that it goes off within x number of minutes of when I set it.
Otherwise I wake at about 2 am and it's still on. (It used to be that
the off-air tone would wake me.) It's like the sleep setting on a
clock radio (which is different from the snooze alarm).

I can't sleep with a TV on.

Oddly enough, as we've travelled with her a lot, she sleeps well on
the road.

Well that's interesting. Why do you think that is? What is different
then?

Probably because she's with us 24/7 and I've always nursed her more
often when we've been travelling, because I don't want to disturb the
other people with her screams.

cjra wrote:
On Mar 14, 6:53 am, "deja.blues" wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message

...

On Mar 13, 5:03 pm, "lu-lu" wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message
btw - it's not that I'm making excuses, it's just that I'm trying to
not do a bunch of different things that require substantial effort and
lifestyle change in the hope that _one_ works. Many things we have
tried, and now I'll just take it one by one and see how it goes.
???????
It sounds like great change and effort is exactly what you need to do.


I mean like going to the effort of moving the large awkward difficult
to move bed into another room temporarily in the hopes that it will
make a difference.

Any possibility of making the other bed more comfortable?
A better mattress or mattress topper or some such thing?

Best wishes,
Ericka

cjra wrote:

Thanks for this reassurance, everyone always blames co-sleeping, but
we would not have survived the first year if we didn't co-sleep.She
reverse cycled at 12 weeks, and that was that.

And there are certainly people who co-sleep with non-nursing
older kids without much trouble. I don't think it's the co-sleeping
per se, but a combination of temperament and environment and so on
that can make a particular situation untenable. I suspect the very
same things that made co-sleeping so important for you all in the
first year are the things that are making it challenging for everyone
to get a good night's sleep now ;-) Oh, the irony of parenthood ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

don_tspamme wrote:

I am an
attachment parent emotionally, so CIO seemed like the worst thing in
the world to me, but in the end that's what we had to do. I took
comfort in the fact that although my son made it sound as if he was
being murdered (I think he's got a future on the stage, actually) he
was always totally fine, and in the morning it was as if nothing had
happened. I felt traumatized for life, and he was busy playing and
enjoying his morning.

People often talk about the mismatch in styles where
a parent who is less touchy-feely gets a child who needs constant
touch/carrying/etc., but you rarely seem to hear about the opposite
situation. None of mine liked being carried or held all that much
and they all have very, very strong personalities and require very
firm boundaries. I find it exhausting, because it just doesn't
sit well with my own nature. But, that's what they need, so that's
what we have to be for them. Fortunately, there are lots of good
things as well, but some days I just wish I didn't have to be so
precise all the time.

Best wishes,
Ericka

MarieD wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message
...
I do think the bath is part of the problem too, as she
sees that as play time and gets very excited, so instead of its
calming effect it's the opposite. It had been part of our bedtime
routine but clearly is not working.

That's how it was for us, too. I always wondered where all the kids were
who became relaxed from taking a bath!

Yeah, mine never did. Bath time was fun time!

I may try to move that to right
when we get home before dinner (although if she makes a huge mess at
dinner, it's easier to clean her in the bath) and see if that helps. I
think she does need some more wind down time after dinner tho.

I know it's hard to not play with her after you've been working and
haven't seen her all day!

Well, you can play with them while they're in the bath.
DD especially has a blast in there, and still loves to have
someone in the room to play/talk with/show her creations to/etc.

Best wishes,
Ericka

On Mar 14, 9:12 am, Ericka Kammerer wrote:
cjra wrote:
On Mar 14, 6:53 am, "deja.blues" wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message

...

On Mar 13, 5:03 pm, "lu-lu" wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message
btw - it's not that I'm making excuses, it's just that I'm trying to
not do a bunch of different things that require substantial effort and
lifestyle change in the hope that _one_ works. Many things we have
tried, and now I'll just take it one by one and see how it goes.
???????
It sounds like great change and effort is exactly what you need to do.

I mean like going to the effort of moving the large awkward difficult
to move bed into another room temporarily in the hopes that it will
make a difference.

Any possibility of making the other bed more comfortable?
A better mattress or mattress topper or some such thing?

Sure. We could lay out the cash for a new bed instead of on
construction materials for DD's room. But as I said, I really don't
want to go to such major extremes when it's a temporary fix which very
well may not work. I am not complaining that the bed is the source of
all our problems. Rather, I am explaining why 'simply moving DH to
another room' isn't as simple as it might seem to some...not to
mention the fact that his bed is from Europe, and he's very fussy
about it. The mattress I have that he doesn't like is perfectly fine
and I like it well enough and honestly it'd be ridiculous to replace
it.

Kind of like having brain surgery for a headache. I'm trying to figure
out the simpler, pain med route first.

On Mar 14, 9:33 am, Ericka Kammerer wrote:
MarieD wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message
...
I do think the bath is part of the problem too, as she
sees that as play time and gets very excited, so instead of its
calming effect it's the opposite. It had been part of our bedtime
routine but clearly is not working.

That's how it was for us, too. I always wondered where all the kids were
who became relaxed from taking a bath!

Yeah, mine never did. Bath time was fun time!

I may try to move that to right
when we get home before dinner (although if she makes a huge mess at
dinner, it's easier to clean her in the bath) and see if that helps. I
think she does need some more wind down time after dinner tho.

I know it's hard to not play with her after you've been working and
haven't seen her all day!

Well, you can play with them while they're in the bath.
DD especially has a blast in there, and still loves to have
someone in the room to play/talk with/show her creations to/etc.

Oh yeah, we don't leave DD alone in the bath and either one or both of
us are playing with her throughout (usually DH).

On Mar 14, 1:00 am, "
wrote:
Oh wow, coming (back) of out lurkdom to say I SO sympathize with
you!! Micah has always been a horrible sleeper. We (meaning I; DH
escaped to the nursery) co-slept with him for 5 months, then
transitioned him to the crib -- and that was pretty horrific, since he
routinely screamed for 1/2 hour before giving up and going to sleep.
ROUTINELY. None of this "oh it was so bad the first night, but by the
third night it was only 5 minutes, and a week later baby went right
down." Micah did not read that book. :P This went on for at least a
month -- maybe longer; I've blocked it out. :P And temperamentally,
he sounds very much like your A -- stubborn, sensitive, doesn't want
to miss out on anything. We've since come to realize that he also
gets night terrors which adds a delightful element to the sleeping
mix, but it doesn't sound like this is an issue for A.

I don't know...how do you know if they have night terrors. She does
wake regularly, but occasionally she'll wake shrieking.

Anyway, I want to sympathize. We really tried almost everything with
Micah. I was getting up in the middle of the night nursing him for 15
months (he weaned at 17), and he still wakes up in the middle of the
night now (he's 3 1/2). For a LONG time he'd come barging into our
room and try to climb into bed with us, and co-sleeping does *not*
work for my husband (I'm lucky he'll sleep with *me*!! -- so there
were many nighttime battles about that.

I'm afraid this isn't sounding too positive for you... but, there is
somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel thus far. For the
last few months, he brings his blanket and pillow into our bedroom and
sleeps on our floor -- doesn't try to talk to us or climb into bed or
wake us up. Now, he's also begun boycotting his bed, and will only go
to sleep in the hallway -- I think he's afraid he's missing out on all
the wonderful things DH and I are doing on the other side of the
hallway door. But I'm fine with these compromises -- we almost
never have bedtime tantrums or middle-of-the-night dramas anymore.
And one more word of encouragement: Shiloh is a *great* sleeper.

I appreciate the empathy. If anything it's nice to know my kid's not
the only non-sleeper out there.


I've got a couple suggestions which you are of course free to
ignore.

1. Instead of night time bath, how about taking a quick shower with
her in the morning? Do you have time for that? I can get in and out
with both boys in under 10 minutes, and that's giving them time to
play.

We haven't gotten her to like the shower, which is odd because she
loves, LOVES running into the hose shower spray outside, but for some
reason the few times we've tried to shower with her she hates it. I
don't know why. We haven't pushed it for that reason. We could
probably do it time-wise, we're just always trying to get her to sleep
as long as possible int he morning so we can get ready!

2. I hate to say it, but I think you may have to do CIO. We did it
with Micah; it sucked; we had to do it for a LONG time; I felt like a
horrible mother -- but he still loves me and wants to hang out with
me. It might make you feel better to sit down with her in advance
and explain what's going to happen -- she may or may not understand
(although she sounds like a smart cookie and I'm guessing she'll get
the gist). And I hate to admit it, but listening to his shrieking got
easier over time -- I guess we became desensitized. We also
discovered that if he *didn't* howl for his 1/2 hour, he'd be up again
about an hour later..

I have learned to tolerate her crying a bit more. I'm just keep hoping
a gentler route will work

3. Remember that your get-her-to-sleep strategies will change, and
different things will work at different times. In other words, she
will not be crying herself to sleep forever. Maybe she'll be sleeping
in the newly-renovated lead-free hallway in a few months.

That's my hope. By the time the room is done, I think she'll
understand a lot more and we're going to make such a big deal out of
it that maybe she'll see it as exciting. One can dream, eh? She's
actually a very independent child otherwise, except when she sleeps.
The bedrooms have a connecting door, so maybe that will help to make
her feel she's not too far away....we shall see!

Good luck. I know how frustrating the sleep thing can be. And I
honestly believe that although parenting strategies can exacerbate
things, kids come hardwired to be easy or challenging sleepers. If I
had been you, I'd have co-slept/night-nursed just as long for all the
same reasons.

Thanks

On Mar 14, 9:54 am, cjra wrote:
On Mar 14, 9:12 am, Ericka Kammerer wrote:



cjra wrote:
On Mar 14, 6:53 am, "deja.blues" wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message

...

On Mar 13, 5:03 pm, "lu-lu" wrote:
"cjra" wrote in message
btw - it's not that I'm making excuses, it's just that I'm trying to
not do a bunch of different things that require substantial effort and
lifestyle change in the hope that _one_ works. Many things we have
tried, and now I'll just take it one by one and see how it goes.
???????
It sounds like great change and effort is exactly what you need to do.

I mean like going to the effort of moving the large awkward difficult
to move bed into another room temporarily in the hopes that it will
make a difference.

Any possibility of making the other bed more comfortable?
A better mattress or mattress topper or some such thing?

Sure. We could lay out the cash for a new bed instead of on
construction materials for DD's room. But as I said, I really don't
want to go to such major extremes when it's a temporary fix which very
well may not work. I am not complaining that the bed is the source of
all our problems. Rather, I am explaining why 'simply moving DH to
another room' isn't as simple as it might seem to some...not to
mention the fact that his bed is from Europe, and he's very fussy
about it. The mattress I have that he doesn't like is perfectly fine
and I like it well enough and honestly it'd be ridiculous to replace
it.

Kind of like having brain surgery for a headache. I'm trying to figure
out the simpler, pain med route first.


btw - I don't mean to sound so flippant. I really appreciate all the
helpful advice from this thread and I'm processing it to figure out
what might and what might not be feasible in our situation. I find,
though, that more and more extreme suggestions are offered, getting
away from the original problem, and then I'm accused of making excuses
when I say those just aren't reasonable in the current situation. As a
last resort, maybe, but I don't think we're there yet.