A couple of weeks ago we Ferberized him (did the controlled crying-it-out technique), which we’re still doing. It’s partially sort of worked. He now mostly sleeps through the night, manages to put himself back to sleep (mostly), and naps better. He can fall asleep in the car or stroller again, which is nice.
I’m wondering now why the heck he still cries for at least twenty minutes at bedtime, every single bedtime, no matter what time he’s put to bed, no matter how long we keep him up (or how little) before his bedtime, no matter how strict we are about his bedtime ritual. He doesn’t fuss like that about naps, and we’ve tried varying his bedtime anytime between 6:30 and 8:30. We’ve tried putting him to bed about when he was falling asleep after being put to bed early, and he just stayed up crying.
I don’t get it. I’m starting to get resigned to him just throwing a fit every time, but… he goes down for naps easily, which means he can just fall asleep when he’s sleepy.
Do you put music or white noise on for him? My youngest was like that. He’d lay there and hear the house noises and just knew he was missing out on fun. I got a cd player for his room and some classical music. It took a couple days, but he eventually listened to the music instead of the house. It still took him 20 mins or so to calm down and get to sleep, but he stopped the crying fits. Later, I got him some fairytale cds, which he still enjoys today at 6.
Our 20 month old still cries or throws a fit when we put her down for naps if she’s not totally tired yet and sometimes she cries at bedtime - but for naps definitely. We use a white noise machine as well and try to keep the hour before bedtime as low key as possible. Relaxing/quiet play, stories etc.
Good luck, I’ve been following your sleep threads since the beginning!
I’m glad that it has gotten better, at least. I’d say he’s just not used to it yet, and to give him time. Let him cry, let him have that time to himself for it, and I think that pretty soon he’ll give it up. No offense to those that suggest the white noise or music or whatever, but I’d think that those things will make it much harder for him to sleep through noises, which is what you want (for him to sleep through noises).
Sometimes if people are over-tired, they can start producing adrenaline and cortisol, which will make it a lot harder for them to get to sleep, so I’d pick the earliest bedtime possible, or more napping during the day, if you think that may be what’s going on.
It’s very apt that this thread should pop up now - as it happens we’ve just solved a two-month bad-sleeping saga with our two-year-old … overnight! And with a solution which I don’t recall coming up in the previous thread.
I should say - our middle girl has always been the “dream sleeper” of the three, as opposed to her elder sister who really sucked at it, and the Tiny Boy who wasn’t much better (though he’s learned, somewhat). So when she suddenly started waking up earlier and earlier in the mornings, not wanting to go back to sleep, getting crankier and crankier, not staying asleep if we slid her sleeping into her bed - well, we were somewhat taken aback. But there was a lot going on for her at the time. We’d moved her into a room with her big sister, which pretty much put paid to the last remnants of “afternoon sleep time” - the girls got nits, then they got colds, it was freezing … we kept on figuring “ok, we’ll solve THIS issue and it will get better” and it never did.And then finally…
We put a new mattress on the bed.
:smack:
The smackie’s for me - the move in with Big Sister coincided with her getting a new bed, and I even thought at the time “hmm - maybe it’s just not comfy enough” … and then got distracted with all the other crap. But when we stuck a soft squishy foam mattress on top of her other one - first night she slept in an extra hour and a half, second night “only” an extra hour (but fair enough - she went to bed three hours early!)
All of which reminded me how much better our kids as babies always slept on Granny’s lovely comfy soft squishy (forty-year-old, non-SIDS-approved (!)) cot mattress than at home. I never quite had the confidence to simply swipe the squishy mattress for home use, but baby sleeps were materially improved by stuffing a couple of quilts under the sheets, on top of the hard rock-like mattress which is all you can buy these days.
Oh, and Daniel still does the “grump for ten minutes before falling asleep” thing frequently (he’s ten months now) - except the other way round from you - for naps, not for night-time. Rachel, in her time, too - she was a monster for nap time. They do get better eventually! But try upping the squishy-bed factor - it can’t hurt!
I can’t recall how old your baby is, but at a certain point, they know that you’re somewhere else other than with them and, since they have no sense of time, they don’t know whether you’re coming back or not. Or, it could just be as stated earlier that he’s missing out on the fun. Maybe he knows, too, that nighttime separations are longer than naptime?
Either way, it sounds like it’s the separation that bothers him and that he just needs to fuss it out to settle. I’m glad things have gotten mostly better for you. One way or the other, it sounds like you’ve found something that works well for you, or will eventually. If he were shrieking his head off in terror for longer than 20-30 minutes, I’d suggest you find a different way to get him to sleep for a while, but it sounds like it’s just a matter of time.
Two things I have learned from dealing with kids sleeping habits:
Their sleep habits will never stay consistent.
You need to stay consistent with your routine.
These two facts seem to be polar opposites but you really need to accept #1 and stay on track with #2.
My 2+ year-old goes through all different kinds of sleeping streaks. Down without a fuss for weeks at a time, crys every time for a few weeks, sleeps through the night for a few weeks, wakes up at 3am sharp for a few weeks, etc. etc. It’s always changing.
The best I can do for him is to make my behaviors to his sleep habits consistent and predicatable. If I try to change my behaviors every time he changes his it just confuses him and frustrates me.
Some babies just like to let you know they’re pissed when you put them down. It sounds harsh, I know, but I’ve got one little guy I babysit like that. He’s 25 months now, he’ll *ask *me for a nap, “Nap, pwease?” and then he’ll still cry for 15 minutes. He’s done it since I started watching him around 6 months old. It’s just what he needs to do to get to sleep. My daughter needs music and to be told there’s no fireworks. Another kid I watch needs his blanket. As much as I can, I just indulge these little quirks - they’ll give them up when they’re ready. Or not, in the case of my husband who needs the bedroom door open exactly 20 degrees and to sweep any dust or cat hair off the sheet with his hand before getting into bed.
Well, my baby doesn’t deliberately pee on my stuff. Or at least not yet. My cats do that.
I figure this is just something he needs to grow out of, really. It’s just painful.
