If it is physiological, better living through chemicals is an option. Sleep deprivation in a child is a terrible thing on the child and on the entire family.
I had about 5 years of my daughter going to sleep sometime between 8:00pm and midnight, and then waking up wide awake 2-5 hours about 4 times per week. It was horrible for all concerned. As far as I’m concerned, Clonidine is a miracle drug as it puts my daughter to sleep (but not so good at keeping her asleedp). For the past 5 years, she gets a low level does at bedtime and is asleep within 60 minutes, and if she wakes up (almost every night) she get a second small dose and is asleep 30-60 minutes later. It’s tolerable and everyone gets at least a functional amount of sleep. And my daughter’s progress with everything improved noteably from the second night of full sleep. Poor kid suffered for 5 years.
Here’s what helped us: a sleeping bag on the bed. Our kid slept in it (on the bed), then next to it (on the bed), and then gradually it was pushed onto the floor.
Note that this particular sleeping bag looked like a dog–the dog’s head was a built-in pillow. Also what may have helped was that it was a special gift from Grandma and Grandpa.
What is different about when she goes to bed and when she wakes up? That may give you clues on what to ask when you (with or without the pediatrician) try to find out what’s making her want Mommy.
One of my brothers had sleep issues which mostly got solved by a nightlamp; in his case the differences had been twofold: one, when he first went to bed he was already dropping by himself, and two, when he went to bed there was still a bit of light coming in under the door that wasn’t there when he woke up in the middle of the night.
Pretty common scenario in a general pediatric practice, much more common than you may think. Vast majority of time the desire to be in your room begins to fade right about this age so you have that going for you. There are many possible “right” approaches.
What we are missing here is the history of how this routine developed in the first place. How did sleep routines start from 5 or 6 months on? How was it first handled when she started to call out in the middle of the night? How old was she when she started coming into your bed in the first place? What did you do then?
Odds are this is not the scared in the night one. But if it was then the key is to give the tools to deal with what is imagined … things like imaginary monster repellant spray which works great on imaginary monsters.
I am also assuming that the bedtime routine includes leaving her while she is awake and that she falls asleep on her own in the first place.
The typical approach for this is what gets called psychologically gradual “extinction” and several versions have been suggested already. The easiest way to do it that I have seen is similar to what has been suggested already: a sleeping bag kept under your bed. Talk ahead of time that if she wakes up and has a hard time falling asleep in her own bed she can come in to your room and pull out the sleeping bag and sleep next to your bed. But that if she climbs in your bed and wakes you up you will walk her back to her room instead.
For most kids that is close enough for the night time anxiety and need for reassurance. And in my book it aint a sleep problem unless it wakes me up!
Once they have adapted to the step out of your bed the trip to your room no longer seems as appealing and the vast majority of the time within two weeks they just stop bothering.
Yes the walk back and gradually do less and less in the room, as already suggested, works too. Sit on the bed, to across the room, to in the doorway, to in the doorway but not where your face is seen, to in the hallway calling out, to checking in a few minutes … But it takes longer and disturbs your sleep longer.
I would not advise a tough love approach at this point but it does have its place. It usually works better if it was established in the first place. Of course approaches must be matched to the family … like much else there are different approaches that work better for different families.
Very interesting answers - thanks, everyone. More details:
As of now our daughter starts by sleeping in her own room. She likes it, and the mattress is nice and comfy. I usually stay with her, with my wife taking over during the weekends. We read her stories, sing a few songs and keep her company until she falls asleep. It’s been like this for the last 2-3 years. Before that she just slept with us, because of various issues with breast feeding - my wife produced milk slowly so she would feed her multiple times during the night.
At some time usually around 12-1am she wakes up and tries to get in mommy’s bed. She used to wake up earlier, check if we were in bed, and go back to her bed if we were still awake. But now she just says “I want to sleep with mummy!” and doesn’t wee or want anything, and is not scared or anything. She just wants to stay with mummy. If I bring her back to her bed, she complies and falls asleep reasonably quickly, but in about another hour she wakes up and tries again.
But even letting her sleep in mummy’s bed is not a good solution, as she often wakes up during the night and has problems falling back to sleep. This is a problem I used to have as well, but when I was a small kid I just read in my own room.
My wife tried to go and sleep in our daughter’s bed after our daughter went to sleep in our bed. That also doesn’t solve the problem, because if our girl wakes up again (which she often does) she will go looking for mummy in her own bedroom to sleep with her.
The GP refuses to even contemplate a NHS-funded specialist “until all other avenues are exhausted”, which means we have to prove with 100% certainty it’s not a discipline problem.
Personally, I think that it’s a discipline problem caused by my wife giving in. But she also hates being told so.
First, waking up in the middle of the night is not the problem. We all do, several times, usually just looking around, finding ourselves in our beds, and going back to sleep without even remembering we had woke up. IF she had early on been falling asleep in her bed in the first place then when she woke up she’d have looked around, found herself in her crib by herself, how she normally falls asleep, and gone back to sleep. Instead she found herself without that usual circumstance. “Where’s someone holding me, singing to me, or feeding me until I fall asleep like I do in the first place? ROOM SERVICE!” And unless she knows how to do that falling asleep alone in the first place it is an unfair expectation to have her do that in the middle of the night.
So step one needs to be added. First teach her how to fall asleep without you in the first place. At this point at bedtime the gradually doing less and less company after the book and bedtime song, farther across the room, in the doorway, doorway but not face seen, sitting in the hallway calling to her but not in sight, going away and checking in on her in a few minutes … so on. Once she has that skill, then do the sleeping bag bit and typically you’ll be golden.
In my practice I try to make it clear that there is nothing “wrong” with a family bed approach, but once you have that going at 5 months it will get progressively harder to change until the child reaches around and is ready to outgrow it, so do not start down that path unless you want to continue it until that long or longer as a conscious choice.
The thing that popped out to me is that she’s restless even after she falls asleep. You might ask her pediatrician if that’s a concern.
Another thing you think about…does she get enough activity during the day? Is she home with her mom all day and if so, what are they doing? If she’s at school, how much recess does she get? Kids tend to need a good hour at least of physical activity a day to stay healthy and I imagine that ensuring that she’s moving around enough would help her sleep. You might consider a post-dinner (but pre-bedtime run/walk) or, if you have the time, even a swimming class in the late afternoon/evening a couple of times a week.
Purely anecdotal, but my kids sleep like rocks when they move around a lot during the day, but if they don’t move, forget about it - not only are they restless while they’re sleeping, they take forever to fall asleep. I’m the same way. Get in a good run after the kids are in bed and I feel awesome when I wake up; don’t run or walk and I can’t fall asleep or if I do, I can’t stay that way or my sleep quality is terrible.
Another FWIW … I found this resource on line from the director of the Yale Pediatric Sleep Center on how to stop co-sleeping. Well written and straightforward and having it to discuss with your wife might be of use. You are in that reactive co-sleeping section with a solid sleep onset associations issue.
This is just a possible approach that worked for us when our son woke up in the middle of the night wanting comfort (which didn’t happen often, and this was when he was around 3-4 years old, so a very different situation):
We had a nice comfortable, very large sleeping mat in our son’s room. If he woke up in the night, one of us would go to his room (he never left his room, but would awaken us over the baby monitor) and stay with him. Usually he’d stay in his bed and the parent would sleep on the mat; other times both parent and kid would share the mat if he was especially restless.
It made things fairly easy for us because one parent got back to sleep in the parental bed very quickly, and the other parent took only a little longer to settle into our son’s room. And once he had a parent in the room with him, he had no trouble going back to sleep. So little sleep was lost by anyone and we were all happy.
When I have trouble breathing while sleeping it triggers claustrophobic dreams. As an adult I recognized this and learned to wake up. Otherwise it would trigger some kind of anxiety attack. As a child I wouldn’t have understood this and there was no way to articulate what I as experiencing. It would have been a lot of mental stress on top of being in a drowsy dream state. I distinctly remember my parents calling the doctor for a house call in the middle of the night. Yes they did this when I was young.
There are all kinds of things that could trigger angst while sleeping so a log of what is observed would be a good thing to take to the pediatrician. That could include food eaten, shows viewed, friends or adults recently interacted with, willingness to discuss or not discuss ANYTHING such as school, watching the news, etc…
I found this comment amusing. Still, pet cats aren’t actually nocturnal, they are active during both night and day, varying their activity according to rewards. But yeah, it’s tricky to get one to help you sleep - the cat is out for itself, and probably doesn’t let you cuddle for long. I’ve had cats sleep at my feet, but they tend to weigh down the blanket and make it hard to move. Harass the cat too much and it’ll go find somewhere else to sleep. A 5 year old isn’t going to know how to handle a kitty cat properly.
I think there’s your answer - you’re trained her to only be able to go to sleep when you’re in the room. She wakes in the night (which isn’t uncommon) and can’t go back to sleep without one of you around.
So instead of trying to fix the nighttime waking, perhaps focus on trying to wean her off you guys being in the room when she goes to sleep at bedtime. Keep working on that great routine of bath, stories, cuddles, songs, but then leave the room (or slowly edge yourself to the door over a series of nights). Lots of tools you can use - nightlights, music, a special toy, a promise you’ll check in with her in 5, 10 etc minutes. Fix bedtime, and the nights should become easier.
What DSeid said sounds right to me, but another possibility is that she doesn’t need as much sleep as she is getting, and that is why she doesn’t sleep well. Teach her to read and give her a flashlight.
But it’s quite true that it’s normal to briefly wake at night. Back when I had an infant in a crib, I was startled one night, when I woke up to use the bathroom and heard her awake in her crib, quietly playing with a shape sorter toy. I tiptoed quietly by…
A little update - my daughter seems to have taken well to falling asleep by herself. She even slept most of the night in her bed a few times, and looked for mummy only in the early morning; today she got milk and cookies for breakfast as a prize for it!
It’s progress, and hopefully things will improve even more in the future.
