Sleep chat/woes

[snowboarder]

Can I ask some questions about my 2 and have a moan?

16 week old: Takes AGES to settle at night, wont self settle (shouts at me!) so I am feeding him to sleep (I know, I know) but he keeps waking up when I put him down. Once asleep he's pretty good though. But my main question is what is this leg banging?!? All night, whilst asleep, he pulls up his legs and BAM whacks them down with full force. I don't mind in principle, but I may have to evict him from my room/bed soon as it's waking me up! What is it? Why does he do it?!? Oh and HOW to get baby no. 2 into any kind of routine?!?

26 month old: Hum - nap refusal (especially on nursery days - he attends 2 mornings a week) and taking an hour or so to go to sleep at night. Hits the side of his bed in a sort of silent protest. What are other peoples sleep routines with 2 yr olds? He is currently doing 8pm to about 6am (often earlier) and has up to a 2 hr nap during the day. Nap too long? I often have to wake him though...which leads to grumpiness.

Hate the way sleep is an all consuming part of early parenthood. I had no idea...

[Pickle]

I KNOW I'm going to get shot down, and I'm not suggesting anybody follow it to the letter, but I found the Gina Ford book great for giving me an idea of nap times/lengths/how much etc. for each stage of development.

I didn't follow it 100%, more adapted it to a "lite" version, but it worked wonders for us and I have two brilliant sleepers as a result.

Just a suggestion :)

[Fuschia]

Does little one have wind? Makes mine squirm...

8-6 possibly a bit late to bed for big one... mine were Ok with a 90 min nap till about 2.5, now if they sleep that long (in fact, at all, sob!) they don't go to bed well. But at 26m they were Ok napping till about 2.30.....

Early waking atm is the long days./light mornings I think

[snowboarder]

Pickle - I KNOW - but how to accommodate baby 2's naps when you have energetic toddler bursting in/nursery drop off/pick up/ need to be out at park etc. I just can't do it. And mine can't a) seem to do her 4 hr ish feed schedules, or b) sleep/and or keep awake as long as she seems to think they can.

Big sb is bathed/story-ed and in his dark room on his own at 7/7.15. He bangs the cot for an HOUR. He has banished the monkey asleep/awake clock to our room - apparently he 'no like it'. Today is the longest day, right? So it can only get darker...phew.

[Fuschia]

CN you feed baby lying down so you can just roll away when he drops off ?

[littleEDfamily]

Our first at 2 was still having a morning AND afternoon nap. Crazy. She'd then go to bed at 8:30ish at night and slept beautifully. But we didn't have a baby to cope with too so could cope with the late bedtime.

I think your wee toddler is just not tired enough at bedtime. Can you maintain sanity with him having only a short nap in the buggy/ car (or a couple of short naps) instead of a long cot nap? With our second, I've adapted now to a totally new expectation of daytime sleep. Ours sleeps in the car/ buggy only (or boob), and it actually works fine, although I do sometimes dream of the 2.5 hour day naps we used to get out of No.1

Oh and I don't think the feeding to sleep thing is as bad as people make out (as long as you're generally around 24/7 until they outgrow it). I still do it sometimes during the day if she is desperate for a sleep, but at night, she has her feed but I put her to sleep in the cot awake and she seems to be fine with that nowadays.

[snowboarder]

I have a new woe as of early this morning. 2 yr old can climb out of cot. Despite sleeping bag. Joy.

[anna_r]

We cut 2.5 yr old nap down to one hour about a month ago because was up talking/shouting/singing in bed til 9pm despite bed at 7.30. Seems to have helped a bit.

With second (now 10 months) I was happy with short nap in morning in buggy while out with second and kept trying afternoon nap once older one in bed. I just sort of did whatever worked for the first few months though then really focused on getting good afternoon nap using shh pat from about 5 months.

It's feels really hard when you've had a bad sleeper for number 1 and you're determined to do things differently for number 2, but then end up doing all the same things again (eg feed to sleep, rocking, sling etc). But theres a reason - because that's what works! Since neither of my two were the type who could ever be put down and self settle this worked fine and then I just started doing more and more putting down awake, patting when they were a bit older. This week was the first time in a very long time both went to sleep, by self, and slept all night and I slept 7 hours without waking. Feel like a new person. I guess what I'm saying is not to beat yourself up about the so called 'bad habits', you're just doing what comes naturally as a parent xx

[Fuschia]

anna_r Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>

But theres a reason - because

> that's what works!

Good post anna!

[Belle]

Yup that's a nice thought Anna, and I'll def bear it in mind in a few months time!

I also found I had to start cutting the nap after bedtime hassles - we had a few months of disastrous bedtimes. We initially tried cutting nap out altogether but that led to meltdowns/crazy buggy naps at 5pm which disrupted bedtime - even though it did mean he was so exhausted he crashed out straight away at night. So we experimented a bit and settled on 1 - 1.5 hrs (depending on when he woke that day, what he's been doing , errr how much I feel I need a break from him!). I think just breaking the cycle helped - I think it's the accumulative nature of a daily 2 hr nap which affects their bedtimes, as nowadays we find we can on occasion let him go 2 hrs if he (or we) really need it and nothing is affected. Of course there are the odd days when we get a bedtime fight or nap refusal, and he was initially grumpy when I woke him, but that did settle. Now I find if I don't wake him he either wakes of his own accord, or goes quite long and gets grumpy.

I do also think shorter nap helps with the early waking, though not always. Ironically we had some of our worst early starts right in the middle of winter, so the light theory didn't apply to our son. Overall though we have realised we can drive ourselves mad trying to figure out correlations/patterns, and it's more a case of finding something which works most of the time. They will always buck the trend just for fun on occasion. I'm not looking forward to seeing how a newborn affects my 2.5 yr old's sleep!

[mrs f]

I'm by no means any type of expert, having only one 10 week old who is a pretty crap sleeper but, he goes down at 7 every night, I do a bath routine etc then he feeds but he literally feeds for an hour (sometimes more!) and then he is sparko (until later!!) I found when I first started putting him down at 7 that when I thought 45 mins feeding was enough it clearly wasn't so I had to keep re-settling him. Totally impractical for you I know...

Also when they wake before 7 what are you doing? Baby f woke at 6:30 this am & I treated it as a night feed, no speaking etc & then got him back down until 7:30... Don't know if that would work for you, do you ever have to re-settle 2yo at other times? Might be worth behaving in the same way, even if you have to keep doing it until his body clock is adjusted?

[akc74]

Seems like you've had good advice on the sleeping routines (I am a selective Gina fan, as it's helped me a lot - but like Pickle don't want to get into that debate) and I only have one so far (nearly 1 yr old) so can't comment on the challenges of 2 - but I am full of admiration.

HOWEVER, the leg banging thing - I am glad to hear that wasn't just us! My son did that for months with real gusto - quite odd. Has calmed down now if that's any comfort...