# New baby (3mos) - Toddler won't sleep! Help!



## Windspirit (Apr 25, 2004)

We cosleep and we are currently having a lot of trouble getting our toddler to go to sleep at night. Here's the situation:

We have a king sized bed with a twin mattress alongside it. Before our second child was born, our oldest was sleeping in the twin mattress next to the bed. He went down very easily around 8:30pm after about a half hour. The practice was to read for ten minutes, nurse for ten minutes, and cuddle for ten minutes (times fluid with some overlap).

Then along comes number two... He was back into the bed for large parts of the night - not surprising. It was a hard adjustment with the newborn sleeping with mommy and his "assigned" spot with daddy... They had already been doing this for about 6 weeks before the birth (when he would join us on occasion), but I think that the new baby made him more interested in climbing in...

Now, he sleeps in the twin bed mostly until morning...BUT he WONT GO TO SLEEP!!! ARGH!

It takes us between the (now-miraculous) 20-30minutes to 2hours to get him to go to sleep.

We've tried comforting, reading more books, reading less books, nursing more and less, leaving him to sleep in the room alone if he does not go to sleep after cuddling (this does not involve crying - he just goes and turns on and off various items in the room until he finds himself in the dark and comes to the door, opens it and stands there looking pitiful), earlier or later bedtimes, shorter naptimes...I think part of our problem may be becoming consistency - we don't have the patience anymore, I think...

Anyway, what works for people here?

Heather


----------



## TeaBag (Dec 18, 2003)

I know how you feel, I've been struggling with some of these same issues since our youngest was born almost 8 months ago (our toddler is 22 months). I don't have any answers, though. I just try to do what's best, if I can, I spend the extra time putting her to sleep, if I really, truly can't, then I tell her I love her and walk away. She follows, I put her back in bed, she follows, I put her back. Usually, within 3-5 times of this, she just goes to sleep, but other times, I just let her get back up and play for another hour or so. Yes, it's inconvenient, and really, really hard at times, but since I'm single parenting it right now, I have to choose my battles even more carefully than before....

Maybe your dh and you tag team your ds? You nurse and then Daddy lays with him until he's asleep. You don't mention his age, but maybe, if he's old enough, set a timer..."I will lay with you for this long..."type of thing? I don't know anything else to offer, except more


----------



## Windspirit (Apr 25, 2004)

We have tag-teamed a little bit - we have to because the infant can't be without me for very long... One of the questions I have had is how long do you try an approach before deciding it does not work? a week? three?

Heather


----------



## Windspirit (Apr 25, 2004)

Well, I am new, so it might just be that I need to wait a little longer... or everyone is fresh out of ideas... Does anyone know of a place to go where I can get some answers about bedtime issues?

Basically, I am looking for two things:
#1 Suggestions as to what to do about the bedtime dilemma I described below.

#2 What is normal... How long should a 2 year old's nap be each day? How long should he sleep at night? When is the usual time for putting kids down to sleep? We used to just take him to bed when we went to bed - is he too young for going to bed "on his own" (We are cuddling with him until he falls asleep, so he is not alone while conscious, but we are leaving the room and I am sure he knows that after he sleeps we leave for a while...)?

Good places for thoughts?

Heather


----------



## cinnamonamon (May 2, 2003)

No real answers here (when #2 is born my ds will be 22 months -- so I'll probably be there soon!), but lots of







s.

What I do know is that there are a LOT of variables re: length of sleep at night/naptime, etc. My friend's child sleeps 10-12 hours at night (not straight through) with two substantial naps, my ds sleeps about the same with only one nap -- and that nap is sometimes as short at 45 minutes! You are probably pretty adept (sp?) at reading his sleepy cues, so I would continue going with that. I definitely don't think he's old enough to just go to sleep by himself if he's been parented to sleep before...unless it is something you ease into.

When I started putting Ian down before I went to bed, he woke up every 5-20 minutes at first...gradually that has stretched into 3ish hours...then he wakes in another 2, and after that if I'm not in with him he is up every 5 - 45 minutes. I think it took one or two months to get that down with consistancy every time...nurse to sleep, get up & leave... With #2 I am going to try not to always nurse to sleep, because it is making it very difficult for me now. Of course if that is what baby needs, that's what baby will get!

The websites I have looked through are Dr. Jay Gordon's, Elizabeth Pantley's (author of The No Cry Sleep Solution), and Dr. Sears. If you search the forum you will find all their site addy's.

I'm not sure why, but the nighttime parenting board doesn't seem to be getting much traffic lately... other good boards are gentlemothering.com (this is a Christian site), and http://www.heart-at-home.com/forums/ ...hopefully we will pick back up, here though! I'm anticipating having the same q's soon.


----------



## mum2sarah (Apr 23, 2003)

I have a two year old and a 7 week old and I totally understand what you're going through. We have almost the same setup in our bedroom--a big queen bed with Sarah's twin bed pushed flush next to it, which she was used to sleeping on before the baby came. Then all hell broke loose when Ashley was born. All we did was trial and error, and now we have a somewhat viable solution. Here's our typical day: I came to believe that it isn't consistency in insisting upon napping at a certain time for a certain length that is important; rather providing a consistent *opportunity* for napping and then letting your toddler decide whether and how long to nap seems to be a better approach. So I be sure to provide that opportunity. If we're out and about and she falls asleep in the car in the afternoon, I let her. Then I come home, park, and sit on the porch with the baby, watching Sarah as she sleeps in the car--this is often a good time for reading. Or if we're home and it's early afternoon and Sarah looks tired and asks to nurse, I take her and the baby into the big bed and tandem nurse them. Provided that Ashley cooperates, Sarah will nap if she's tired. That said, I will say, I can rarely escape once we're all positioned in bed. I just accept that and take the opportunity to catch some zz's myself. Sometimes I can escape and get things done;other days Sarah doesn't nap at all or for just a short time. I just go into it with a laid back attitude and say, "whatever will be will be."

Same thing with bedtime. We do different things. If baby is already asleep when Sarah is tired and asking to nurse (usually between 9 and 9:30pm), I just have dh hold the baby and nurse Sarah to sleep in bed. If they're both awake, I tandem nurse them in bed. If I am patient enough, it's no trouble to unlatch Sarah once she's in a deep sleep (deep being the key word), and then roll away from her.

It wasn't so easy in the first two or three weeks;in fact it was a nightmare: nursing Sarah for over an hour only for her to toss and turn and not go to sleep. I think it was a combination of me being too insistent with sticking to our usual "bedtime" and Sarah waking up when the baby did, not sleeping well, and becoming overtired. If you think baby might be waking up toddler, maybe you and baby can go to another room at night when baby gets fussy. This is what I do. Sarah had been nightweaned when I was about 4 months pregnant with Ashley, and she usually would sleep through the night with no trouble, but when Ashley was born, it became obvious that Sarah's sleep was being disturbed. So now, although we all go to sleep in our "megabed," I usually leave with Ashley at some point during the night and we finish sleeping in the spare bedroom. If you don't have a spare room, a futon in you living room would probably work just as well--I have a friend who does that. Then Sarah bursts into the spare room in the morning and has her morning "boosies" (usually around 7am) and we start all over again.


```
What I do know is that there are a LOT of variables re: length of sleep at night/naptime, etc.
```
I agree with this completely. When I was pregnant with Ashley, Sarah's sleeping was quite predictable, but it changed if she was teething or sick, and even when it was predictable people said she didn't sleep "enough." She was not quite two and she'd nap once during the afternoon for two hours and then sleep for about 9 hours at night (approx. 10pm-7am). But every child is different--what might be enough sleep or an appropriate bedtime for my child might not be right at all for the next, nor might it be right during times of adjusting to a new sibling or teething,etc.

It took me a while to make myself relax and stop obsessing about it, but when I went back to the thinking I had when Sarah was a newborn (when she's tired, she'll sleep), things have become so much easier. It's more of just a different way of looking at things than it was that we found concrete solutions. HTH


----------



## buttercup (Dec 18, 2002)

Our 18mo dd (at the time) did the same thing. She was on a normal sleeping schedule until ds was born. For weeks we tried to figure out what went wrong and how to correct it. We finally realized that me staying home from work threw her off her schedule because when I returned to work a couple weeks ago she started back into her own routine. This routine involved DH waking her up early. He is a SAHD.

Here are some of the things we tried -
taking her to the park and letting her run around to get all the energy out of that spunky body.

having a bed time routine and making sure not to get her excite when playing w/ her

sometimes I'd just put her in a sling and do household chores (she always fell asleep

We play Nemo every night before bedtime. She has watched it over 100 times.

I think the thing that worked the best was getting her tired by letting her play outside.

Iknow I am not much help, good luck in what ever you do.


----------

