Or at least that’s how it feels when you haven’t slept properly in two days.
We had to move the munchkin from her crib into a toddler bed as she figured out how to climb out of the crib and I need no broken collarbones! (or any other bones) So parallax and I went and bought a nifty new toddler bed and filled it with all her night time paraphernalia and spent all day hyping the new bed to be the world’s greatest place to sleep.
She loved the bed. She spent lots of time piling it with toys or lounging on her pillow. Yay!
Then night time came and we did our normal bedtime routine. As I placed her into bed she gave me a huge grin. And as soon as we started to leave the grin turned to a grimace and the ‘no’ and ‘uh-oh’ and bull snorting (best way to describe what she does when angry) all started and proceeded to become crying. Daddy, being duitiful and all, spent that night next to her on the floor.
Night two she falls asleep watching Bear in the Big Blue House. So she transfers effortlessly to the crib but wanders into our room crying at 1:30am to replay the previous night’s festivities. Poor daddy stayed with her for an hour and a half before he could sneak away.
Tonight will be night three. I’ve searched parenting sites to try and find ways to ease her transition but everything focuses on how to get cosleeping kids out of your room!
So how many more nights do we have of this? Any advice out there?
I have zero advice to give. I started a similar thread a while back and lots of people chimed in with helpful hints, but in the end I was just too much of a pushover to stick with anything. The munchkin sleeps with me now–I don’t mind, and actually enjoy feeling so close with him–but unlike you I don’t have to worry about maintaining the marital bed since it’s just us. I can only hope he decides he likes his own bed sometime before he starts having friends over for sleepovers!
Good luck.
#1 never did a toddler bed. His crib went to his sister and he went to an adult bed. I would love to tell you that he stayed there happily, but due to many different factors, he ended up co-sharing with us until recently. ( He still joins us nightly about 2am.) I never minded sharing.
#2 Was in a crib until she was three and I was happy happy, happy with her being there because she would play merrily all morning long until she grew tired of it and then climb out on her own. She never fell. Her crib went for her new cousin and she is in a regular adult twin bed. With about 9000 stuffed animals.
To keep #2 in bed, we play an audio tape ( Sweet Dreams by Jim Weiss @ www.chinaberry.com is particulary nice. 30 minutes each side of soft, gentle story telling. Another excellent one, by the same man is " Good Night’. If I listen to these tapes I am out like a light.) YMMV
When I was little, I thought my parents were really dumb not to realize that if they “forgot” to move the chair they sat in to read bedtime stories, I could use it to aid me climbing out of the crib. Years later I mentioned it to my mom, and she said " Oh, we left it there on purpose. I used to nearly kill myself diving out of the crib, until my parents pushed it up against my sister’s bed so I couldn’t. We figured you were going to climb out one way or the other, and the chair was probably a safer thing to climb down from." Which of course makes me wonder why parent’s just don’t put down or take off the side railing when they don’t mind the kid climbing out as long as they don’t hurt themself…
I wish you a lot of luck with the toddler bed. Some kids really don’t take to them. I’m not sure if it was the “own room” or the “big boy bed” that bothered my brother (we moved and got our own rooms when he was 2) but he never spent an entire night in his that I know of. He was tucked into his own bed each night, but… My parents had sliding doors that he couldn’t manage, so I would wake up every morning with him curled up at the foot of my bed like a puppy. Good thing it was a full-sized bed I don’t think he slept in his own bed until we moved again and shared a room for a while with bunkbeds when he was around four.
You’re co-sharing and now you want to kick the kid out into a cold, cruel toddler bed? Bwa! Hahahahaha! You made your bed and now you have to sleep in it! (Sorry I couldn’t resist.)
Can’t really help you since we banished our progeny to a crib early on and then just switched them off to full size twin beds when the crib wasn’t big enough anymore. Buuuut…
If you have room, you might try setting the toddler bed up next to your bed and see if that’s close enough for the kid. When that works itself out, try pushing the toddler bed away from your bed, but still in the same room. When that works out, try kicking the shrimp out of your room altogether.
Or duct tape. You could just… no, people might think I’m serious and get mad.
The transition from one bed to another is a big deal. It’ll take a while. Tell you what though. I’ll try to sleep a little more every night to make up for what you lose. Then I’ll mail it to you. OK?
Our little one is five now and still in the room with us in her own bed. Works out for everyone. If there is a “crisis” in the night then you don’t even have to wake up all the way to deal with it. She is happy having someone close. She goes down a cpuple of hours before we do.
I say move the toddler bed into your room and be done with it. Why chose the headache when the alternative is so easy.
The whole idea of kids in mom and dad’s bed boggles my mind. When we were kids, we didn’t go into our parents’ room without permission and most certainly never without knocking. Same rule applied in our house. It would never occur to me to let my daughter sleep in the same bed room with us, much less the same bed. She had her room, we had ours, and that’s the way it still is.
To clear up a little of the confusion The munchkin hasn’t been in our room since she was 6 weeks old. I get no sleep at all if she’s in the same room with us for 2 reasons. 1 - She’s loud and restless while I’m a horribly light sleeper. Every sniff, grunt or sigh wakes me up. 2 - she requires the birdies to sleep. The birdies is a crib toy known as ‘the kick start crib center.’ Listening to this lullaby every hour or so all night makes both my husband and I insane.
I also don’t like the idea of sharing my room with my kids. This is my feeling on this only - I think if co sleeping works for you that’s great - for you. Every so often when she’s sick she sleeps in our room and we get no sleep at all and it sucks but we can tend to her this way and she feels better so we do it.
We were going to convert her crib into a toddler bed as it said we could in the crib instructions but we didn’t buy the rail set to do this soon enough and they changed the rails so the new ones won’t fit on our crib I can’t just take the side off as then she would roll out of the crib and that’s a bit too far from the floor for her to fall! Standard bed rails don’t work with cribs either as they require a twin size mattress to keep them stable. If she rolled against one she, the rail and mattress would all tip in a heap! (The crib is pretty high as it has a drawer underneath for sheets and blankets) Keeping the side lowered may have been a solution but if she did crawl out she couldn’t get back in. If she gets up at 2 and just wants to grab a toy I don’t really want her to have to come get me to get back into bed.
Last night we let her fall asleep in the living room and moved her to her bed asleep. She woke up twice and needed us to sit with her until she fell asleep. Luckily it did not take an hour and a half each time!
Hmm duct tape Oh and I’ll be waiting for my big box o sleep! Will that be sent USPS, UPS or FedEx?
My advice is to keep having Daddy sleep on the floor next to her for a while, if he can stand it. Or you, if you’re able. It might seem like forever, but it won’t be. Looking at it over the course of years, a week or so of nights on the floor is no big deal. You get more sleep than getting up with her all night, and the little one feels more secure.
nod Ellen… that’s about where we’re at right now. Hubby has graciously volunteered to be the one on the floor as I am almost 5 months pregnant and it is a bit more awkward for me.
She loves the bed during the day but just doesn’t seem to want to sleep there at night.
I didn’t have any issues with four out of five of mine. The oldest (step-child) was five by the time I got to meet her so I don’t know about her.
I do remember a friend suggesting lowering the mattress to the lowest setting and taking the side off the crib and putting pillows on the floor on that side in case they roll out.
You could also get a regulat childrens bed rail and use that on the crib. Doesn’t work on the toddler beds because of the way the frames are build but it should work on the crib. Leave one end open so they can slide out when want to get out. The opening at the end will only be big enough for them to get through but not big enough for them to fall out of.
If all else fails the transplant method will eventually work. Letting them fall asleep where they will and waking up in the bed. Not alot of sleep for mom and dad this way but then again in my house parents aren’t allowed to sleep.
Get used to it, it doesn’t get easier when they get older and realise that at the last minute they need to use the bathroom, brush their teeth, get a drink, or whatever.
At one time my youngest son (who reminds me of Calvin) tried to convince us that he was a robot and didn’t need to sleep. He was almost five.
And just last night our youngest daughter (almost six) tried to tell me that she couldn’t possibly go to bed since the sun was still up and so it must be morning.
The fun never ends. Now they are all in school and on my days off I get to nap and catch up on 13 years of lost zzzzzzz’s.
I’ll ask some of my other friends what they did with their heathens and see if they come up with anything else.
Keep a sense of humor and catch your sleep when and where you can. Good luck.
Since you have ruled out co-sleeping you might consider using a white noise machine (we just use a small fan) in the kids room. This has the effect of drowning out external noises and will reduce waking because of sirens, car door slams, etc. Won’t solve the waking and needing comfort problem but it might cut down on the number of wakings.
Sleeping on the floor for the transition was our method, too.
It did eventually work. Just the new bed was enough anxiety-production to move the baseline too high for self-comfort measures to work. New bed had to be kind-of-not-new bed before sleeping in it alone with no company worked. Much. He still strongly prefers company when going to sleep, at almost 6 years old. VERY active imagination (you should hear what the monsters look like! :eek: ). As long as I don’t fall asleep, it doesn’t take that long… he only takes about 12 minutes to fall asleep most days (about average for adults).
I don’t think he slept in his own bed until we moved again and shared a room for a while with bunkbeds when he was around four.
I can’t just take the side off as then she would roll out of the crib and that’s a bit too far from the floor for her to fall! Standard bed rails don’t work with cribs either as they require a twin size mattress to keep them stable. If she rolled against one she, the rail and mattress would all tip in a heap! (The crib is pretty high as it has a drawer underneath for sheets and blankets) Keeping the side lowered may have been a solution but if she did crawl out she couldn’t get back in. If she gets up at 2 and just wants to grab a toy I don’t really want her to have to come get me to get back into bed.