Posts Tagged ‘sleep habits’

The Overtired Phenomenon

Monday, June 12th, 2017

There are days when our young children wake up early, run around like crazy, skip their naps, and simply crash after dinner, just before you can get them in the tub. This time of year, they’re snoring, utterly done with the day, when it’s still bright light out. This is what I call the jackpot. It’s sort of a reward for being up since the crack of dawn and going strong for hours. Sometimes it seems like there’s not enough caffeine in the world. But we manage. And when they succumb to their sleepiness, it feels like a major victory.

But for every time bedtime goes down easily, there are nights when they refuse to give up the good fight. When you look at the clock and look and them and think, “how?” How is this possible? How are they not passed out? It’s not something that people without children easily understand but it’s so true: sometimes children are too tired to go to sleep. When they are infants, you know how cranky they can be if you miss their “sleepy windows.” But the pattern persists well into the toddler years.

I do think the light evening hours exacerbate the issue. Often when I’m trying to get Hudson down he will stare at the window and say, “it’s not night.” Very hard to try to convince a two year old to ignore daylight savings time and get some rest!

Fortunately, all kids eventually go to sleep. Hopefully there’s even a small window within which all of your children are sleeping at the same time and you can relax enough to sleep, too!

Have a restful week, everyone!

Still Fighting

Friday, November 11th, 2016

From Friday Mom – Erin:
Okay, I promise this will be the last week I write about bedtime.

But I am losing the battle.  Completely.  Rory is currently asleep on the couch for the fourth night in a row.  I know.  That’s dangerous precedent.  We’re undoing good habits.  But he’s literally crawling out of bed over, and over, and over, and over again each evening.  After an hour or so of fighting, I’ve given in, needing to get back to work or handle chores around the house, I have been resorting to the silent treatment, waiting for him to curl up on the couch, covering him up, and carrying him to bed much later in the night.

It has to stop.

This evening I’ve been researching techniques on limit setting and how to re-train a pre-schooler who is challenging the bedtime norm.  I’ve read most of it before and know that we have to be consistent, persistent, and ready to deal with an hour or more of walking him back to bed, again, again, and again.  But I just wish he’d managed to hit this impasse at a time when we both had a little more time to do it.  I know how harsh and unsympathetic that sounds.  As though I am a parent that doesn’t have time for my child.  As though it’s my fault that he is acting out.

Trust me, that’s probably why we’ve been so bad at nipping this in the bud sooner.  But starting tomorrow, this is it.  No snuggling on the couch, no “one more goodnight;” just bedtime. And that’s that.

Sweet Dreams

Monday, April 11th, 2016

From Monday Mom – Neetika:
When Haley was about a year and a half, she went through a terrible sleep regression. She would not fall asleep. She would not stay asleep. I didn’t get much rest for about six months, until we got her a big girl bed and bribed her with rewards to get her sleeping in it. Eventually everything worked out. By the time her sleeping got to be smooth sailing, we had another kid.

Hudson has been a pretty good sleeper. There have been some bumps in the road, but the priceless parenting experience I have this go-around has made all the difference. I had my fingers crossed that we wouldn’t hit an issue at eighteen months. Unfortunately, we have. Lately Hudson has had short naps, problems at bedtime, night wakings… and none of my bright ideas seem to help!

I don’t have a quick fix to this problem. I think I’ll just have to ride it out. But I’m not worried about it. With my first child, I was so frustrated not knowing when the problem would end and so worried that the problem was really her. With my second, I know that none of these blips lasts forever. And I know he will be fine.

Restless Days

Friday, September 4th, 2015

From Friday Mom – Erin:
I’ve focused a lot on Rory’s transitions lately without providing any real updates on Charlotte.  That is due in large part to the fact that she is remaining in the classroom she began in last June.  She’s officially the elder stateswoman of the room at nearly eight months old.  Though, fortunately, the next oldest child is only about a month younger, so they’ll have a reasonable distribution of ages over the year.

Unfortunately, there are also some new very young babies that joined her classroom this week.  Our center begins accepting babies at 3 months old, meaning some of Charlotte’s new classmates are a full five months younger than she is.  What this also means is that many of these little ones are still learning how to nap and are far less consistent in their patterns.  Which, in turn, translates to a lot more crying.

One of the benefits of the timing of when Charlotte started is that most of the other babies in her room were older.  As a result, she was taking her cues from reasonably good nappers.  Now, she is being kept awake or woken up during nearly every nap each day by crying classmates.  Yesterday, upon being woken up, she apparently sat in her crib jabbering at her teachers, as if to say, “could you please ask them to keep it down?!”

Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be affecting her too much.  She has pieced together a series of shorter cat naps each day and is doing reasonably well each evening.  It’s not particularly problematic, but it has caught me by surprise.  Perhaps because things were going so smoothly for her brother, but also because I just didn’t really consider it in advance.  As with everything with parenting, this transition period is a reminder that two children may have very different experiences with seemingly identical circumstances.  I’ll make a note to expect it next year. . .

 

 

 

Synchronized Sleeping

Monday, July 6th, 2015

Haley and Hudson share a room, and overall the situation has worked out quite well. Hudson goes to sleep first. After a bit of whining, he’s pretty much out for the night. Haley is not too bad either. She requires a witness, with abilities including back-scratching and head-patting, but she’s so tired by the end of a long day without a nap, she tends to go down without a fight.

Recently, Hudson has started become a bit fussier. Is it teething? Is it because he’s learning to crawl? I don’t know. It’s not too bad, but it pushes back when Haley can go to bed. Then, the problem becomes not that Haley is not tired enough for bed, but overtired by the time Hudson settles and we can get her in there.

We’ve tried different solutions—telling her to ignore him when he fusses, putting her to bed in a different room initially or all night—but despite our best intentions, things often go haywire. We—the kids and grown-ups alike—try to keep our chins up and shake it off. Tomorrow will be another day, we think, and kids go through these phases. But it’s been a week of chaos.

We’re lucky overall since the kids almost always sleep all night, even if they have late starts and early rises. With very little ones in the house, I think that’s all you can wish for most nights.

Enjoy your week, everyone.

Sleeping Diva

Friday, May 22nd, 2015

From Friday Mom – Erin:
I have been extremely hesitant to write about Charlotte’s sleeping habits for fear that I might jinx what has, to date, been a fairly easy process. I chalk it up to the fact that she mirrors her brother’s preferences (to some degree), therefore it was somewhat easy for me to follow her lead and circadian rythm when establishing a “schedule” for eating and sleeping. We endured a lengthy period of eating every two hours, which made the cycle quite short. But at around three and a half months, she finally seemed to settle into a somewhat steady pattern of two longer naps and two cat naps each day.

Charlotte started sucking her thumb about a month ago. Since then, she’s been pretty good at self soothing. That being said, there have been a handful of naps during which she would wake up after 45 minutes or an hour and, despite quite clearly wanting to be asleep, she would need to be rocked for a period of time before going back down.  Though frustrating, I’d been able to get her over the hump and back to sleep.

Until her daddy took over childcare duties this week.

Her poor father was unsuccessful in getting her back to sleep for the first part of the week, causing a great deal of stress for all of us. He resorted to baby wearing and walking around the house to get her napping.  And it has convinced both of us that I created a bit of a diva.

Although the experience has shown him, first hand, that maternity leave isn’t the same as a vacation, it has also led me to worry about whether Charlotte will transition smoothly when she starts daycare on June 1st. She’ll be visiting the center for a few hours each day next week, and I am hopeful that the staff’s years of experience with infants will trump her father’s, such that she’ll sleep peacefully during naptimes there. I’m also uncertain how they handle “catnaps,” but am hopeful that our orientation meeting today will calm those concerns. I just really hope their calming techniques will prove effective. If not, the few minutes I get to spend with her each evening will be marred by screams of an over-tired infant– not the most pleasant way to spend an hour.

I am trying desperately to remind myself that Rory’s sleep habits were my biggest concern when he started daycare. I remember being intensely worried that he would not get enough sleep and that he would be a wreck each night. Sometimes those fears proved true. More often than not, however, I was proven wrong. Afterall, these little kiddos are tremendously resilient, and they adjust to just about anything after a while. I hope Charlotte will be no different.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

Wednesday, January 28th, 2015

From Wednesday Mom – Janelle:
It has always been a challenge to get Tate adequate sleep. After several years of trial and error, we have developed a bedtime routine that works for Tate, as well as us. The current issue is that Tate gets up WAY too early.

Most days, Tate is up well before there is any sign of life in our house. He keeps his bedroom door closed and plays respectfully until he hears somebody else get up.

I applaud him for not purposefully waking us, but I am concerned that getting up so early leads to a chronic lack of sleep.

Tate’s behavior and maturity have been improving over the school year and his preschool teachers are optimistic that he is ready for kindergarten next year. However, when Tate doesn’t get enough sleep, his behavior regresses. If he gets up at 4:45AM, of course, he is exhausted by early afternoon and he refuses a daily nap. We’ve tried the alarm clock tricks and they weren’t successful.

This behavior is cyclical. Some days, I have to wake him up, especially after an active day of play or if he isn’t feeling well. Other days he is wide awake at 4:45AM. Tate tells us he wakes up because he just can’t wait to play and get his day started. I’m happy that he is excited about playing. I’m not happy he’s not getting the recommended amount of sleep for his age. The child needs rest!

My hope is that as Tate’s daily schedule gets busier, he will naturally be more tired and less likely to awaken so early. As he gets older, I’m sure the day will come when I can’t get Tate out of bed before noon. As my sister says, “the time will come much sooner than you think.”

Sleeping Through The Night

Monday, December 8th, 2014

From Monday Mom – Neetika:
After Thanksgiving, Hudson started to (mostly) sleep through the night. It’s awesome! He’s doing eight to ten hour stretches. He’s only two months old, so I feel very lucky. Haley did the same thing at eight weeks. But now that I’m a second time mom I’m smart enough to know this probably won’t last forever. It doesn’t matter—I’ll take what I can get.

Despite my ability to get a full night of sleep myself, I often feel fatigued. Every evening, I fall asleep quickly—something I never used to do. I sleep very soundly, another rarity for me in the past. I’m grateful that he doesn’t usually stir until after 6, but it takes an enormous amount of reserve and will get up and tend to him. In a couple of minutes I’ve adjusted to being awake and can face that it’s time to tend to the children. But it really feels like I could sleep many hours more.

I don’t know how long it will take to get over this tiredness. I slept poorly in late pregnancy and during the first few weeks of Hudson’s life, of course. It seems that it’s going to take me a while to recover. I’m sure as soon as I feel full well rested, he’ll regress and I’ll face sleepless nights once again—that’s always the way it goes! For now, I’m just going to embrace how good I’ve got it.

Wishing the rest of you a week full of rest!

Big Boy Bed

Friday, December 5th, 2014

From Friday Mom – Erin:
Rory’s big boy bed arrives tomorrow. Rather than buy baby girl a full new set of baby furniture, we’re passing down Rory’s old crib and dresser and getting him new furniture.  We’ve been doing out best to get him prepared over the past month or so. We’ve been reading an Elmo book about being ready for a bed. We’ve been talking about sleeping in a big boy bed, how fun it will be to read stories in bed together, and how much fun it will be to snuggle under the covers in his big kid bed.

We know that we’ve got our work cut out for us in terms of making the transition. I’d been planning on leaving his crib in the room to help ease the transition, though his daddy has been reading other parenting websites and generally reading up on the “recommended” approach for such a transition. We’re currently leaning toward removing the crib entirely, recognizing, of course, that we may have a few long nights ahead of us if he doesn’t immediately take to the new bed.

I wish I could say we’d devised a fantastic plan, but the truth is, life has been so busy lately that we’re largely going to be winging it. Apart from making sure all of his furniture is safely anchored to the wall and blocking his bedroom door with a gate to ensure that he stays safe, we’re not entirely sure how it will all work out. But, as with most other milestones, we’re pretty sure it will work out eventually. Or at least that is what we are hoping.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

Monday, November 17th, 2014

We had a lovely, low-key weekend. The weather was cold so for the most part, we stayed in. Our good time included obsessing over a college football game, a spontaneous afternoon dance party, and endless homemade chocolate chip cookies. By any measure, it was a success.

I was able to soak it in and enjoy myself because Hudson is finally nursing a bit less at night, allowing me to sleep as many as six (!) hours in a row. This is huge. Recently it had seemed that any simple activity like watching a cartoon with Haley took a monumental amount of effort to participate in. You know it’s bad when you’re too exhausted to enjoy “chilling out.” No matter where you are, if it’s not asleep in your bed, it’s not where you want to be. Now I’m starting to feel rested enough to take pleasure in relaxation!

It will take more time before Hudson gets into a reliable pattern, but I feel that we’re heading into that sweet spot at which he is an often content but non-mobile baby. As a second time mom I know that once he starts crawling, I’m in trouble! I can’t believe that just as baby proofing is becoming a non-issue for Haley, I have to start at ground zero with Hudson! But I’m not going to worry about that now. I’m just going to appreciate every easy day that comes my way.