My daughter is 1 1/2 (EEK!). She’s a good little sleep soldier. I work nights so her sleeping late works for me. It of course, drives my husband nuts.
She goes to bed at about 8pm. She gets a bottle at 1am. While she usually wakes up around 9 am, she plays quietly in her crib for an hour or so, then dozes back to sleep, wakes up, dozes off, then usually around 1pm, she hollers for me to come get her and she’s going non-stop until 8pm.
My husband worries that she is sleeping too much, but I figure the hours add up to the right amount and she seems to take after daddy in that he is not a morning person and can’t eat until he’s been awake for a while. She ends up getting 3 meals a day plus snacks, they are just sort of scattered through out the day with dinner being at about 7 ish.
I slept yesterday until 11am. I woke up kinda panicky that she might not be ok, but I heard her talking to herself happily as soon as I awoke. We do have the baby alarm that registers if they stop breathing and I figure if that’s not going off (yes, we call it the dead baby alarm, yes she has stopped breathing before) she’s just fine.
beaming What a good baby! Mommy slept until 10:30 this morning!
2-1/2 year old boy: Doesn’t like to actually physically be put to bed for naps or nighttime sleep, but sleeps pretty well, generally speaking. In crib by 8:15PM, we read a couple of books to him, and then leave. He might turn his light back on and read a bit more, but then he’s out. Wakes up happy every goddamn morning. He is the only person in this house for whom that is true, but he’s just so cute and earnest about it—greets you like he hasn’t seen you in ages and is just so darn happy you’re here. Does nap for about 90 minutes during the day.
4-1/2 year old girl. Has never been a “good sleeper”. This one is a night owl and would gladly be on an 11PM - 9 AM sleep schedule if we could accommodate that. And it’s really just her circadian rhythms. She also is in bed at 8:15, and we read stories, etc. Turn out light and leave by 8:45 or 9. 30 minutes later, out she comes. Can’t sleep. Back into bed, tuck in, try to sleep. Relax and think pleasant thoughts. 30 minutes later, out she comes. I’m bored. I can’t fall asleep. My head is asleep but my feet are awake.(Actual quote). Many nights, I fall asleep before she does. On weekdays, are absolute drop-dead time to get her out of bed is 7AM, in order to get ready, have breakfast, and go off to school or daycare. I have to peel her out of bed 90% of the time. And she only naps about half the time. If she goes 2 days without a nap, that 3rd day is* rough*. And the days she doesn’t nap do not automatically mean an earlier sleep time at night. It’s a crapshoot.
Six month old boy: Right now, we’re working on some sleep issues. He’s gotten in the habit of waking to eat in the night, and he doesn’t NEED to eat (believe me, we didn’t feed him when he woke at 3:30 last night, and if he was actually hungry, he would have sucked back his morning bottle this morning, and he only took a couple of ounces). He goes to bed without a problem - usually around 7:30 or so at the latest, and still wakes 1-2 times a night. We know he’s not waking because he needs to eat, but because we’ve been offering it to him. So we’re working on getting him to sleep through the night right now and weaning him off of those night-feedings, and then we’ll work on getting him to sleep later. Usually, he’s up by 7 or so for the morning (although he goes down for a morning nap within an hour and a half or so).
One seven year old boy, one five year old boy. Neither has ever had his own room, we instituted seperate beds when Eldest was pushing six and youngest was three because Youngest was entertaining himself keeping Eldest awake.
They go to bed at 8:00 pm and get up at 7:00 am. Youngest sleeps pretty much immediately after going to bed; Eldest frequently switches on the light-up globe and stays up reading or playing. He thinks I do not know this.
As long as he wakes up himself at 7 and I don’t have to drag him out of bed in the morning I don’t mind.
Eldest has the peculiar quality of being immediately alert and springing out of bed when he wakes up; Youngest hangs around in bed and has to be dragged out no matter what time he goes to sleep.
Eldest slept through the night on his second day of life (and scared the bejeezus out of me doing so) and continued the habit thereafter unless he was sick or cutting teeth; Youngest did not sleep throught he night reliably until he was four and a half. So I had about two years of thinking I was a great parent. sigh.
I restrict my efforts to controlling the environment making it sleep-friendly and requiring my kids to be in their beds at a certain time and be quiet about their activities there. I gave birth to the most vicious little power monger on record, however, so this is probably not a necessary distinction for most people.
Hee hee. My mother bought me a flashlight for my 5th birthday and said, “Now, you better not use this to read under the covers at night!” Put me to bed that night, “Where’s that flashlight? OK, just remember, no reading with it! Here, let’s put it on your nightstand.”
Of course I read with it every single night. Took me ten years to figure out how she bamboozled me!
The Princess has always been the cause of sleeplessness since before she was born; she enjoyed playing “trampoline” with my bladder in the middle of the night. Once she was born, there were the usual 3 a.m. feedings, which made it easier to cosleep as I was breastfeeding her at the time. Once she was finally sleeping through the night, the night terrors began. Once she got over that (around age 2 1/2-3), there was the bedwetting. Now she’s graduated to teeth-grinding and the occasional screaming nightmare about clowns or some such. Bedtime is 9:00 on school nights, but it usually takes about 30 minutes to an hour of bedtime stories, back rubs, and odd questions (sample: “What if everybody had to live on the moon?”) before she finally drifts off. On weekends she gets to stay up till 10:30. I think she’s going to be a night owl, like her dad.
My son (now 4 years old) had troubles both falling asleep and staying asleep. For him, the difficulty with staying asleep in particular turned out to be related to big adenoids that made him snore quite profoundly starting when he was about 2 years old and (especially if he had a cold at the same time) sometimes you could see how difficult it was for him to take a good breath in by his nose. Rushgeekgirl , you might want to consider if this might be affecting your two year old - either because of allergies or infections her adenoids may be too big for her to get good quality sleep at the moment.
She goes to bed between 6-7 p.m. and wakes up around 1 a.m. for a little bottle and a cuddle. If I go in there she wants to play, but if Daddy goes in there, she knows he means business and she goes back to sleep pretty quickly.
She wakes up for the day around 6 a.m. If we are lucky and she sleeps through the night then she will usually wake up around 5 a.m.
At home she has a morning nap around 10-11 for 1.5-2 hours. She won’t usually have an afternoon nap.
At daycare she has two short naps.
I love her early bedtime because it means McDeath_the_Mad and I have some alone time, but we definitely pay the price with those early mornings!
Eldest is close to 7, and she goes to bed between 9-10, and I get her up at 7:00 for school.
Oldest twin 26 months is sleeping through the night. bed by 9:00 and up anywhere from 6-9:00.
Youngest twin has been getting up for 2-4 hours for the past 6 months. But not every night, and she has some waves where she’s sleeping through with one bottle feed for a week. I guess she gets up 5 nights a week on average. Usually, she gets up and plays by quietly herself either on the bed or in the room. we can’t figure it out and have tried with the pediatrician several times.
