Parents of non-sleeping toddlers, can we get a group together to book a sleep seminar?

[Ruth_Baldock]

I think I remember seeing various posts on here re: a sleep seminar which is run for parents to educate and help learn about their child's sleep habits; offered to groups of 6 or so of parents with children of similair ages.

If I was writing about my 1y/o, I'm sure I'd be inundated with responses. But I'm not. Me and my husband, and entire family really, are at our wits end with regards to my toddler's sleep, and we've hit breaking point now.

Bit of background/history:

My son, Seb, is 2y9mo old. He has always been an atrocious sleeper, and even as a baby, would barely nap. I remember him being awake for 11 hours straight, fairly reguarly, when he was as young at 7 months old. This was not for want of trying, he reallty seemed to struggle to fall asleep. We had a bedtime routine in place, but he'd never fall asleep at 7pm, and he'd stay up with me and his dad until we went upstairs to sleep at around 10pm, where he'd have a late night feed (a bottle, by the time he was 3mo old, of forumla although it never seemed to help him sleep any longer). He'd eventually drift off and one of us would transfer him to his cot, and then he'd wake every 3 hours.

I went back to work when he was 10mo old, and was exhausted. I'd fall asleep on the bus to work and kept being woken up by the driver at the end of the route. Fearing for my job, we decided to sleep train him. It was painfully hard, but it worked, and he was an excellent sleeper until around 21mo, daytime and night sleeps. His sister was born when he was 18mo old, and I am sure this has played a part in his sleep getting worse and worse and worse. He's in a bed, not a cot, and has been since he was 22mo. He was weaned from his dummy at 22mo, too.

Basically, he doesn't nap. If he sleeps in the day, he's up till 10pm (a good day) or as late as 1am on a bad/standard day. He is knackered during the day but struggles to fall asleep before 3.30pm unless a car journey is involved.

When he finally does fall asleep, he'll manage a few hours before coming into mine and his father's room. We did rapid-return a few months ago, with great success, but we tried on Saturday and he was basically up for about four hours from 12:30 in the night. He understands about night/day and knows when it's light and daytime, it's okay to come to our bed for cuddles. If he wakes in the night he'll say he knows he has to wait for morning, but he wants our bed now.

His sister never co-sleeps, but does still stir in the night for feeds, so perhaps this brings him into a lighter sleep. They share a room, and there is no way out of this.

We were referred to a sleep clinic, but the emphasis was on a good bedtime routine. We have had the same bedtime routine since he was born. His diet may have something to do with it, he's quite the picky eater.

His lack of sleep/playing musical beds is having a massive impact on everything we do now, and has started to really make me resent him, which may sound ruthless, but I'm afraid after almost 3yrs of brokem sleep, save a period of 10mo (in which we had blips/regressions) is true.

If this sounds familiar, and you'd be interested in getting a group together for a sleep seminar/a cry, do PM me and let me know.

Yawn.

Rx

[Saffron]

I'm in. 2.5 yo still waking 1-2 x nightly. I'm returning to work in Sept. I'm planning to nap under my desk.

*sob*

[Ruth_Baldock]

How understanding are your employers re: Zombie-like state? My boss was so, SO supportive and lovely, but his boss and HR were total see-you-next-Tuesdays. I got a written warning :(

My boss did point out to them my sleepiness/lateness caused by it could have been caused by my PND (it wasn't) which shut them up slightly, but they had to follow protocol re: consistent lateness, I guess.

[Ruth_Baldock]

Also! What do you do when Little Saff wakes? Apart from cry/swear inwardly?

[Saffron]

I have a fellowship, which is basicly like contract work. I don't clock in/out. As long as I don't nod off at the controls of some expensive kit, then I can get away with it. There are already a few eccentrics in our department. I'll probably fit right in.

Generally when Little Saff wakes, I stuff a boob in her face and go back to sleep, b/c trial and error has deemed this the most rapid way for us both to go back to sleep.

Also despite eating well during the day, she still asks for milk at night/early morning-- sometimes 2x a night! Several times I've done milk to water fades with some success. (I think around 8 months I did a fade to get her from 5x wakings to 1-2 wakings, which is where we've seemed to "stick"). I just find it really difficult to keep doing it over and over. She was always a night nurser. I know there's a big anthropological change in sleep between 2-4 yrs, I just don't see it coming any time soon for us.

[kittysailing]

I'm in. Abe is waking 1-2 nights a night since we had baba - usually in the gaps between baba's feeds.#matchsticks

[lenster]

Nicola, who runs the sleep seminars, is lovely. If you don't already have it, her website is childsleepsolutions and she posts on here under that name too.

Good luck!

[Smiler]

Poor you. Have two tricky sleepers (littlest coming up to two and not great, eldest is four and has been OK sleeping since 2 or so but still has bad patches sometimes, and disturbed by the little one). And commute / am struggling at work. So feel your pain.

Some ideas.

cut out his daytime sleep completely, and make sure those providing childcare do likewise (they sometimes don't follow requests about sleep). Give him something calorific that he likes for tea. take turns to look after both children for a few nights at a time, so at least one of you gets some sleep sometimes. Go to bed ridiculously early. Don't keep him downstairs with you in the evenings, he will enjoy it and want to do it again.

some people do the supernanny thing of putting back to bed with a cuddle the first time, silence after that (not tried this, but it may come to it with the little one!) i imagine most sleep courses will be some variation on that / crying-it-out (not tried)

Or rewards of some kind for sleeping all night.

[Smiler]

My current boss is not at all understanding, I once mentioned that was tired (when being criticised for a mistake), she looked disgusted and made a sarcastic comment. So have never mentioned again to anyone at work. Show no weakness etc. [sad]

[Ruth_Baldock]

Smiler; We have cut out ALL naps, which means between 2:30-3:30 I have a hell of a job keeping him awake and happy (thank god for youtube videos of farms and trains, is all I can say...) My IL's look after him and his sister on Fridays so I can scream into a pillow all day/nap and she never normally puts him down for a sleep, except for last friday, she put him down for three hours for some reason. I won't go into the reprucussions of that. Hellish.

We did offer rewards, which worked for a fortnight or so, but now he has decided that Mummy's bed is MUCH better than Dairy Milk/Robot Toys/Anything else. My arsenal of techniques has been exhausted :(

It's always me that does the night wakeups, my daughter wakes to breastfeed so theres not much my husband can do. It's genuine hunger, she gulps her milk down, I'm not too worried about habits. When she's ready to stop, she will (this has been the line I've taken with her, and it's worked like a charm for a seamless progression thus far e.g. no swaddling, drinking from a cup etc)

About 60% of the time, if he isn't sleepy, I will lie on my bed with him for hours and hours and hours. Or in his room, lying on the floor. Sometimes he runs off and runs downstairs. If I have the energy, I will literally wrestle him back upstairs, but sometimes I don't and I let him come downstairs. He did this once a week or so ago, and WOULD NOT come upstairs to sleep at 10pm. Me and his Dad were exhausted and put him in his room, he ran out, went downstairs and we believe he played with his trains until around 3am when we heard him rustling about in his room. Shocking parenting right there. This is how big the problem is.

Basically, this is the pits, and I'm sorry you're going through it too. My husband is in a work all night if you have to, several nights on the trot, industry and can get by on 4hrs sleep. He has adapted. I have not.

[oimissus]

so sorry to hear you're going through this Ruth (and everyone else). I have very little to offer but this, which I though sounded a bit extreme, but is in some of the books - my brother-in-law attached a bungee to his toddler's door handle so he couldn't open the door to get out (the other end was attached to the bannisters) - so in effect he was locked in. I think this technique is in Toddler Taming, which I have and you're welcome to borrow. Like I said, sounds extreme - but worth a try? Would keep him in his room at least.

The other thing I though when reading your post - am I right in thinking that Seb is starting pre-school in September? Maybe that will help (though I appreciate it's a way off!)?

Also, quiet time instead of a nap - worth getting some films in, and the 2 of you can snuggle up to The Jungle Book (Miss Oi's fav) or Nemo or whatever?

Really hope you all can get it sorted - I am awful on lack of sleep and am damned lucky I rarely have to suffer from. Fingers and toes crossed!

x

[alieh]

That sounds horrendous. Poor you. No wonder you want some help! We found that getting sleep advice from a consultant was so helpful, even though it didn't tell us anything we didn't already know we were just too tired to execute a coherent plan on our own.

If it's co-sleeping he's after could you have a go at full-time co-sleeping for a period just to get him into a more normal sleep pattern? Any kind of sleep training is going to be near impossible when he's this sleep-deprived/over-tired. So you go to bed with him at whatever reasonable hour works for him/you - if he's not napping, I would think he would need to be asleep max 12 or absolute max 13 hours after waking up for the day?

My son is a chronically early riser so I put him to sleep at 6:00-6:30. Even 6:30 is often too late and leads to night-wakings and 5 am starts. I have given up fighting to get him to sleep-in later. If he is going to be awake by 6 regardless, at least I can get 11.5-12 hours sleep into him by doing super early bedtimes.

Could your husband take over full-time co-sleeping with toddler and leave you to deal with baby?

We also have a stair gate on our son's room - we almost never actually have to close it, but just use it as a bit of a threat "i.e. if you're not going to settle in your bed we're going to have to close the gate because it's not safe for you to be roaming the house alone when we are sleeping."

[Monkey]

Ruth, This sounds absolutely horrid. As someone who really does not cope well with lack of sleep, I really sympathise. I don't have much advice to give you unfortunately, except to say that now might be time to go back to the sleep clinic, explain that you have a bedtime routine in place and that the problem seems to be elsewhere. There has to be a solution.

As for other comments on how to cope at work, I actually fell asleep during a meeting last week (would not recommend it but it provided my colleagues with much entertainment). Must have been a few seconds but after that I was wide awake!

[Saffron]

I'm beginning to think that some children with sleep issues simply do not benefit from conventional advice... otherwise they wouldn't have sleep issues! If you see what I mean?

We've tried early bedtime + cutting out naps. It results in TOTAL DISASTER every single time, makes her night sleep worse. We also tried cutting out naps + normal or late bedtime. Same result.

"Rapid return" (where you just put them back in bed) was also a fail. It think she's just too young to understand it.

I would never lock my daughter in her room. I've already suspected for a while that she has some night time separation anxiety. Locking her alone in her room would send her into emotional meltdown.

I would like to get her falling alseep on her own. I can do this once in a while, but it requires literally checking back on her every minute for half an hour or more. It's completely physically exhausting on me, with little change in her sleep. So it hasn't been value for effort so far. I keep trying b/c I'm hoping as she gets older that it will be more effective.

I'd like to try more wake-to-sleep for early morning wakings, but I do all the night time stuff myself with no daytime help. So it's hard for me to see how I would make wake-to-sleep work logistically, with no guarantee of results. I guess I'm just really sceptical of sleep advice b/c so much of it has not been effective for us. Some children are just difficult sleepers no matter what you do.

I'd still be interested in a sleep seminar, but I'd be quite shocked if it's only CIO! It' seems any expert worth their money really ought to have more to say about sleep than rehashing Dr Green's method, which is widely available for free.

[alieh]

Just to be clear that I don't lock my son in his room at night! I agree that would be extreme. But we do have a stairgate and it has helped a couple of times for bedtime antics when he can't stop himself from running all over the house. We've only had to use it once or twice at bedtime where we say "if you keep coming out we'll need to close the gate"....keeps coming out....close the gate for a couple of minutes and tell him it's time for bed....climbs into bed...go in and kiss him goodnight and leave gate open for rest of night.

He has absolutely no barrier from coming into our room multiple times/night (in bad patches) to let us know that A. he has lost his cuddly toy B. he needs a wee and C. he is tired (my favourite one!). I would be quite alarmed though if he was downstairs on his own in the middle of the night, but he is 3.5 so old enough to really get up to trouble (i.e. tall enough to reach anything on worktops, open fridge, etc.)!

We know from all these sleep threads that all babies and children are totally different, so all you can do is keep track of what works for you and share ideas in case they might help someone else. We've had limited success with wake to sleep past the baby stage because I think the problem is that they do wake up a bit/stir between sleep cycles (that's not a problem obv) and the question is how much they want to involve you in these wakenings! If they want parental involvement every time they stir, then wake to sleep won't really change that.

We go through periods where he is much happier to sleep through on his own, and others where he feels the need to trot into us a couple of times a night. In our case it is very linked to overtiredness. Positive encouragement (stickers, rewards) and Gro-clock work quite well now too but probably only since about age 3.

[alieh]

I meant to also say that I was reading that Healthy Sleep Habits book again last night and there are loads of studies from other countries. Sleep patterns do vary so much. For e.g., in (I think it was) Japan many children of 3-6 years old will have a long afternoon nap and then go to bed very late (like close to midnight). So shorter night, longer nap. Still similar sleep overall.

I think that's the key - figure out the approx. amount of sleep per day that they need. Say it is an average of 10-14 hours/day around ages 2 or 3. Gauge by their mood and the averages if you think they're getting enough or not (if they're getting way below 10 hours/24 then it probably isn't enough I guess?). And then figure out how to chop this up best based on their natural patterns, your schedule, what you can live with, etc. Long nap and late night, or no nap and (hopefully eventually, once they get into pattern!) longer night, etc.

[Ruth_Baldock]

We used to shut the door of his room but weirdly about 2 months ago, he got really anxious about us doing this and now pleads with us to leave the door open, which we do. We had stairgates across his door, and we have them on the stairs, but he has worked out how to undo them!! Time for new ones, possibly. He kicks uo SUCH a screaming fuss if he can't get out of his room that he wakes up his sister, and I have to go in there to calm her down, which is obviously fan-bloody-tastic.

oimissus; he's starting in Jan, providing we can potty train him! (MORE FUN AND GAMES!)

Alieh: He needs about 12-13hrs. He gets about 11, broken up in bits as we all disturb each other when he's in with us. When he's had a bad, overtired day, he is often in bed by 5:30! (With the baby still dawdling over her dinner/smooshing it into her hair downstairs...). Sometimes he will go all the way to 7am when we do that. Sometimes he wakes at 9pm raring to go. What else? Oh yes. My husband has offered to full-time co-sleep with him, whilst I room in with my snuffley baby, and this would probably work for a while provided my husband didn't have to pull all-nighters at work. I am kind of so sick of all of this, I just want kids: in bed, and me and my husband to have some time together. We've not had the best time of it recently and it's hard to reconnect with all this sleep stuff happening. Sorry, bit of a pity party there.

He used to sleep on his own and perfectly for my in laws, who have him overnight quite often. He used to nap for 2.5 hours, then go to sleep at 7pm till 7:30am. In the past few months, he has had the same sleeping patterns there as he does with us, which means my FIL ends up co-sleeping with him in the futon in his( my son's) room at their house. This makes me think it's seperation anxiety/something to do with sleep cycles rather than a 'trying it on for mummy' thing...

Thanks to everyone for their responses!

[crystal7]

Ruth that sounds absolutely awful, poor you. My 3.5 year old has never been a great sleeper either. Up every 3 hours until 12 months then gradually less but with 5am starts. Things have improved a bit as she's got older as we can reason with her a bit more. Her trick at the moment is to sneak into our room at night and climb in between us...sometimes it's a shock to see her there in the morning thing is baby is part time co sleeping too due to not great sleep and 4 in a bed (Kingsize but still)...just not comfortable! I have explained to her that now she's such a big girl she needs to stay in bed as it makes mummy and daddy feel tired the next day etc. etc. This little talk didn't hae much impact but I coud see her thining about it so who knows... Plus baby wakes up at 5am these days and wakes her up too...urgh. Sympathise with the desire to have children in their own beds and adults in theirs, I am fed up with all the bed hopping antics!

Obviously I don't have much advice but agree with alieh, maybe let DH cosleep with S until 12 hours per night become the norm then in phases start to get him back into his own bed. Failing that pay for a sleep consultant, maybe go back to the clinic, ask to see someone else?? And rest/sleep when you can, call in baby sitting favours etc. Good luck!

[Smiler]

Eek, sounds v hard. Hang in there.

It will pass, it will pass!

[Beany]

As another mum of a currently non sleeping toddler can I ask wise mum's "Arghhhh, WHEN will this pass?" All of a sudden, I break my little girl's heart every time I leave her for the night. In her case it's separation anxiety, and i feel for her, but I also feel for me lying on her bedroom floor each night!

Sorry Ruth, no advice - but lots of empathy!

[Caroline_S]

Ruth, I am sure you've looked into it but was just thinking that rather than a seminar, it might be worth getting some one-to-one advice about sleep? For example Millpond Sleep Clinic are meant to be good and I think offer tailored advice over the phone and via email. (I have no experience of them myself though). It sounds as though you have tried all the standard advice and so a sleep seminar might just repeat everything you already know simply because it would be pitched at a group. Perhaps some tailored advice might be more helpful to your particular circumstances.

Sounds really dreadful though - I feel for you! Sleep deprivation just makes life miserable :(

[Saffron]

Beany Wrote:

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

> As another mum of a currently non sleeping toddler

> can I ask wise mum's "Arghhhh, WHEN will this

> pass?" All of a sudden, I break my little girl's

> heart every time I leave her for the night. In

> her case it's separation anxiety, and i feel for

> her, but I also feel for me lying on her bedroom

> floor each night!

>

I think we're dealing with separation anxiety in my toddler too, which is interesting b/c during the day she's very extroverted and not at all anxious. I also think this is why conventional sleep advice is a non-starter for us. In fact some conventional sleep advice like CC/CIO is contra-indicated for babies and children with separation anxiety. Well-meaning friends who have meddled in our family relationship by pushing such advice on us have really done us a disservice and caused a lot of disharmony between me and Husband. It's one thing to offer open advice on a public forum, but people should think twice about interfering with unwanted advice to their friends. It's better to offer sympathy than to push an opinion others. xxx

[cactus]

Ruth, poor you, I can really empathise. My son was a shocking sleeper, he literally never slept through once in

the first two years, and only gradually improved throughout his third year. I became obsessed with sleep/lack of it and felt quite bonkers at times! Thing is, small children aren't good at sleeping, developmentally there is so much going on, so many challenges and phases to grapple with, and I think it just takes time for some of them to cope with sleeping alone.

You've mentioned separation anxiety, and it sounds like your instincts are probably right. In the end, what worked for us was to have a routine that suited us as a family, and then sticking with it no matter what other advice came our way! Also having my son outdoors as much as possible, and physically tiring him out, definitely helped. Even now that he's older, he doesn't fall asleep easily, unless he's exhausted. Have you got/read Margot Sunderland's book, the Science of Parenting?

There is a useful chapter on sleeping, and it's generally a really helpful book. I have a copy you could borrow.x

[Smiler]

Saffron, totally agree, unsolicited advice from family and friends is the pits! It's also upsetting when people state or imply that the bad sleeping is because the parents are "too indulgent" "have created a rod for your own backs" blah blah (we had / have lots of this). Even if it's true (have spent much time worrying about this) it's not nice of people to say.

[Saffron]

Yes, and don't forget my favourite (NOT!) phrase "accidental parenting". GrrrRRRRRRRRrrr.