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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Sleeping babies are the sweetest - why won't mine sleep?


This morning started out relatively well, after dropping the Big Kid off at school, the Little and I came home and had a nap together. The only problem was he was awake and ready to play after an hour and I could have slept for another 2 hours easily!

We have finally had a turn around in the weather lately, with some beautiful warm days - but mostly they've been days I had to work. Luckily today we were blessed with a whole heap of sunshine and warm breezes so it was off across the road to the beach for us after lunch.


He had an absolute ball, trying to catch butterflies, chasing magpies and looking for sheep (don't ask, I don't get it either). It reminded me again why I chose to do this mostly-stay-at-home-parenting-thing.

Unfortunately though, as the day wore on...it became not quite as lovely. We are in the middle of trying to turn around the wee Beastie's sleep patterns, and I tell you what...it ain't easy.

For the last few months, we've been woken by the delicate kicking and bashing of the boys' bedroom door at about midnight-1am, followed by a small but very wiggly 2 year old joining us in bed. Which wouldn't be so much of a problem if he went to sleep and/or lay still.

But noooo, little guy likes to kick off the covers (from all of us), turn himself upside down, sideways, any which way really. He wiggles and squirms, and then demands cereal at about 4am. Enough was enough.

The only thing we could think of was to drop from two naps a day (or one loooong nap) to one nap lasting no more than 90 minutes.

Fun and games....until the evening. By about 6pm he is vile. The high pitched squeals over nothing, the tantrums, the tears...it's all just too much for this mama. I was beside myself, he was beside himself, we were all cranky and we decided we just couldn't do it.

Until...that first trial night...he slept through. Until SEVEN FIFTEEN AM. Which has never happened. Ever. He is a 5:30am boy (as is my big boy - lord knows where they got that charming trait - certainly not from me, I am so not a morning person).

Which of course means the whole house had a good night's sleep and we had to at least trial it another day to see whether it was a fluke or not. Unfortunately (or fortunately, whichever way you want to look at it) he slept through. Again.

So now we just have to ride it out as he progressively becomes the devil as the day wears on...and hope like mad that he eventually transitions away from needing those two naps, to being totally ok with just the one (oh please oh please oh please)...


7 comments:

  1. I CANNOT believe he was still taking two naps!!! Holy sheep... you see what I did there? ;) Little Miss dropped to one nap around her first birthday - granted it's usually around three hours long (noon-3) but the big two even dropped to one no later than 18 months. I bet you see a huge improvement in his night-time sleep. xoxo

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  2. Hey Suzy, I finally came to check out your blog and for the past few hours (with breaks to shove food in to a child's gob) I have been sucked in to it like a vortex. I feel like I've been missing out by not visitng you sooner and I have this strange compulsion to apologize for not doing so.

    Starbaby, Hercules, your friend G, the freaking car, asshat doctors. Wow, a bit of a rollercoaster for sure - but amazing and so beautifully written.

    I wanted to comment on every post but it would be weird, wouldn't it, to get a comment on something so far removed?

    Anyway to bring it back to happy happy joy joy (can you tell I get uncomfortable with emotion?), my kid has just dropped from two to one sleep a day and it's weird... seriously infringes on my twitter time too.

    Gx

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  3. I feel for you with the sleep problems. We've had sleep problems for a long, long time and it is hard to try to figure out for sure. I hope you ride through the transition quickly!!

    ICLW #31

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  4. I'm loosely planning on dropping our wee girl from two naps to one sometime this fall. I'm hesitant to mess with her sleep schedule as it does seem to be working for the moment.

    I really hope that you all are able to find the right balance...

    ICLW #20

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  5. Good luck figuring all this sleep stuff out! Oh but it will be wonderful when it's all settled...

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  6. I promise the dropping to one nap does get easier...and the sleeping through is totally worth it (can you tell we had similar sleep issues?). One thing that worked for us was shifting the one nap to a slightly later time of the day. Good luck.

    ICLW #19

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  7. Oh, I had such sweet fantasies about what it would be like when a baby was big enough to sleep in our bed.

    ERRRK!

    Was I WRONG!

    I hear you - holy crap is it hard to sleep w little ones. Brutal.

    Man, I shoulda done a family bed...

    xo

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