Our trouble with sleep continues. Things were going well with Callie in her bed for a while and then...well...we screwed it up. We moved Lucia into her room at four months because our pediatrician had recommended we put her in her crib rather than the co sleeper in the hope that having more room would allow her to sleep for longer periods. And since we have such a small house we tried putting her in her crib, which was in Callie's room. The first night went ok. Still 3 hour stretches. The next night was better 4-5 hour stretches. We were feeling good, like we had it under control. Which as any parent will tell you, is the kiss of death. Because that is when it will all go to crap.
The worst of it was a couple of days ago. I wrestled with Callie for 2 hours to take a nap during the day. I tried everything. Bribery, cajoling, pleading, demanding. I ended up screaming at her (again). She rolled over and went right to sleep. And I went right into my room and sobbed. Again. I hated myself again for not being the mom she needs me to be.
That night we spent four hours getting her to go to sleep. So around 12:45 am she finally went to sleep. And then we got Lucia down as well. We thought: "Okay. That sucked. But it's done. They are both asleep."Again. Kiss of death. Callie was up 3 hours later. Bill got her back to sleep, slowly but surely. And promptly fell asleep himself in the chair in her room. 1 hour later I went in to get Lucia because she was awake and crying, so I woke Bill up, since I knew he would wake up eventually with a sore back at the very least. After that, Callie stayed asleep but Lucia was up every hour. In between each hour I was crying and finding that my rope had yet another end just when I thought I had reached it already. I started looking into sleep consultants because I couldn't handle this. AT ALL. I knew one of the madres had used one so I emailed her at 2am to find out who she had used. I found a couple of other names as well. I knew that we could handle it with two of us but with the amount of traveling Bill will be doing, the reality is that there is no way I could handle it on my own.
In the morning when I had a grand total of 3 hours of sleep under my belt I received a great gift from my mom. An offer to take Callie off my hands so I could get my rest. Sweet relief! I took the girls to our usual storytime gig on wednesdays and deposited Callie into Grandma Tere's minivan for the afternoon. Lucia and I came home, nursed and went to sleep for a glorious two whole hours! I knew that I probably could have gotten her to sleep more but I wanted some ammunition for this new battle. Off to google I went!
So now we are armed with some good information about toddler sleep patterns. The first thing we did was move Lucia out of Callie's room. At the moment, Lucia's crib is right smack in the middle of the dining room! We are planning on moving it to the back bedroom which means we have to get rid of some other furniture to make it work but that's ok. After doing a fair amount of research I discovered that we were spending too much time on her routine. The experts recommend 1 hour tops from bath time to nigh nighs. I would wager that we were spending at least double that time, which would be one of the many reasons that I hated bedtime! So now we are working on maybe 20 minutes for bath rather than waiting for her to tell us when she was done. I am going to utilize a timer on the phone. So the timer can be the bad guy instead of me. Lord knows I've played that role enough. PJs and then storytime. This one was the hard piece for me to swallow. Being a teacher I was thrilled that Callie liked reading so much, but doing 8-10 books before bedtime was just taking too long but I tried not to let that one show because I thought it was so important. So now we are limiting it to three books at night but I am going to try to read with her throughout the day a little more. We also had been using a lamp in her room but I think it was too bright so it was opening up all kinds of adventures to her after we left the room and closed the baby gate. So now I am turning off the lamp and turning on her twilight turtle so she can see the stars. Some other ideas I read about was to just be as calm as possible when I tell her to go to bed a few times. After that we can move into consequences like taking away a blanket or a stuffed animal for a short period of time (2 minutes or so). Or because we have a gate in her room we can just let her do whatever in there til she passes out. Another idea was to give her a high carb snack before bed like cheese and crackers. I am torn on this one because the other big battle we have is over dinner. I'm afraid that if she just waits me out she gets rewarded with food that wasn't for dinner.
Anyway, so lots of changes. We implemented them for the first time last night and BAM! She went right to sleep! Could be beginners luck, but I know that being consistent is the key.
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