Middle of the night play

[miki]

What do you do when your baby wakes in the middle of the night (I'm talking like between midnight and 3am since I'm already resigned that waking at 4:30am means up for the day), nurses but then does not seem sleepy and wants to play (but you know the kid is tired)? I know some sleep books say no playing and put baby back in the crib. But most of the time for us, that just results in a whole lot of shrieking and no sleep for anyone in the house so that's no good.

[caleymama]

Funny you should post this ... last night was one of those fun nights where DD decided that 12:30 should be the time to get up and not go back to sleep until 4! If she wakes up during the night she will occasionally let us rock her back to sleep but we usually bring her in with us and she'll go right back to sleep. On the jackpot nights though, like last night, she'll toss and turn for hours all while trying to look out the window and throw her blankie around. Finally I just got up with her and after about 30 minutes of playing downstairs she went back to sleep until 7:30. Usually she sleeps 7:30pm or so until 5:30 or 6am. I've found that if she really doesn't want to go back to sleep she won't so one of us just gets up with her for a little bit and then she'll go back to sleep after playing and/or snacking. The culprit for us is that DD is usually hungry on these fun nights because she didn't eat enough before bed, so a snack is usually in order. When DD was younger and still nursing or bottlefeeding at night and she didn't go back to sleep, we usually just did what you did, so sorry - no good advice!

On a side note, DD has a 12X12 blankie that she sleeps with and she'll either throw it out of the crib or lose it in the blankets or or out the side of the crib. When this happens, she wakes up and one of us eventually has to go in and give it to her. She will NOT settle back down herself and will just throw the blankie right back out again. I'm trying to figure out how to get her to settle herself back down if and when she wakes up at night. It's hard, though, because if her blankie is out of the crib she can't and if we go in to give it back to her she won't. Argh.........

[bluej]

Huh, I just had this happen a couple of nights ago. You're right, putting him back in the crib resulted in loud screams that I feared would wake the other kids. I caved and put him on the floor to play for 30 minutes while I rested in the chair. After 30 minutes I hugged him, kissed him, told him goodnight, put him in his crib and went back to bed. I could hear him 'talking' for a bit, but soon he went back to sleep. I feared that I would be setting us up for a new habit, but he hasn't done it since. If it's something that happens often, I guess I would just have to suck it up and use CIO. But if it's an occassional thing (like once in a blue moon), I'd let him stretch and get it out of his system. Sometimes I wake in the night and can't get back to sleep even though I'm tired. Usually getting up and doing a little something helps, so I guess I equate it with that.

4:30 huh? I hope that's not every morning for you!