Help..2 y/o suddenly not sleeping...i don't know what to do now!

[swampnurse]

We were the envy of all of our friends...Our two children are very well behaved in general. And around 7pm every night we told our 2 y/o (2 yrs 5 months exactly) that it was bedtime, put her in her crib with her stuffed pig and said "goodnight". That was the whole bedtime routine...and she didn't wake up until morning. We considered ourselves great parents! :)

It has suddenly ALL changed!!!!

Last week she started refusing to go to sleep. She yelled for an hour before i finally gave in and put her in my bed. The next night I was at work so my husband had to deal with her. He determined she was scared so he sat with her until she fell asleep. She woke up later that night and we had to take her into our bed which is something we have not done since she was a new baby. She now has a Tyke Light and Twilight Lady Bug just like her older brother. That has not helped. Tonight I left her light on and dimmed, left the door open and said i would check on her. She is currently yelling as i write this thread. Each night DH has sat next to her until she has fallen asleep and then she still wakes up b/t 2-4am and we have to bring her into our bed where she spends the rest of the night. The bed is not big enough for two adults, a boston terrier and a child. We do not consider this acceptable behavior and have no idea what to do.

WHAT DO I DO NOW????


Please help!

p.s. she has actually stopped yelling now and MAY be asleep, but will almost certainly be up in a few hours begging to come into our bed.

[DrSally]

What is she yelling? I think at this age fears can come into play. DS has talked about "monsters" and "ghosts" outside or sometimes in his room. Does she have any fears she's talking about?

ETA: If you don't want her in your bed, it might be hard to go back the longer you're "reinforcing" her yelling by bringing her into your room, KWIM? Is there any big change going on in your lives right now?

[elektra]

I am definitely no expert on sleep! My DD's issue is that she will go down awake, say goodnight for DH and for my Dad, but not for me. She cries as soon as I put her down.
Anyway, maybe try moving her bedtime back a bit? SIL has a DD who just turned 2 and she was mentioning to me that her DD was having trouble getting settled at night lately. (Her DD has also always been a champ night sleeper and napper.) So SIL moved her early bedtime back a bit and that seemed to help. I'll have to check what my Weissbluth book says.

[tylersmama]

DS has been going through a phase like this too. Maybe just the age? He's always been a great sleeper, and hasn't put up much of a fuss about bedtime. He would cry for maybe a minute when we closed the door, and that would be it. It's not every night, but lately he's been crying for MUCH longer. We tried bringing him out with us and telling him that he has to lay down and go to sleep on the couch with mommy, but he just ends up watching tv (and of course, WE don't want to go to bed at 8:00!). When he wakes up in the middle of the night, I'll sometimes bring him in bed, where he occasionally will sleep but usually ends up wiggling and giggling and harassing the dog. We got up for the day at 4 am one day last week because I couldn't take the wiggle/giggle anymore and watched Finding Nemo. Twice.

We finally decided that we just had to let DS cry at bedtime. A few nights we went in and got him to lay down and be quiet by telling him we would sit with him until he fell asleep, but that meant we were sitting in the dark in his room for over an hour every night and that just couldn't keep happening. After a couple of nights of crying, he's calmed down and going to bed more easily, but I'm under no illusions that we're done.

Wish I had some advice, but at least I can commiserate. :)

[rachelh]

So SIL moved her early bedtime back a bit and that seemed to help.

Hmmm... I was going to say the opposite. DD is just about the same age (2 1/2) and I realized that she has this window of time which is perfect to get her in bed. If I miss that time (it gets too late) she gets way to overtired and when I put her in she just screams and yells so I was going to suggest putting her to be earlier. :confused:

DD also started being afraid of the dark within the recent few weeks so would scream and yell about the dark when I put her in - I started leaving the hall light on for her (seems you have night lights for her) but I never take her out. I go in occasionally to tell her the light in the hall is on but generally ignoring does the trick - sometimes it take a while but I don't want her to get used to being taken out when she cries.

It will pass with time I think as long as you don't get her used to being taken out.

Rachel

[swampnurse]

No major changes. The only thing I can think of is that, thanks to big brother, she has seen a few of the somewhat scary christmas programs lately. i.e. Santa Claus is coming to Town, The Grinch, Polar Express. I can't believe how scary some of these are!!! BTW, I though Shrek The Halls was adorable. :) We will never watch those other ones again!

So she may really be scared, but i think we have done everything we can to work on that. We got the nightlights and even left the light on. Tonight I left the door open and reassured her several time. She did stop yelling "Mommy come in my room" while i was writing that last post and is now asleep.

My big problem now is the middle of the night thing. I am terrified that this will become a habit if we keep taking her into our bed (and i know it will), but what am i supposed to do in the middle of the night? She is screaming bloody murder and waking up her brother too. I haven't had a good night's sleep in almost a week now!

I am a diehard "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" fan and have so far been VERY successful in the sleep department, so i am FREAKING OUT! I will pull out my tattered book tonight and look, but i don't know if it talks about this.

Thank you for your advice so far and I will update in the morning. Not sure what my apporach will be when she wakes up in the week hours of the morning tonight. I'm already exhausted...

[swampnurse]

Well, you guys seem to have similar problems, at least. I am NOT going to allow the sitting with her until she falls asleep routine anymore.

Maybe we will let her yell tonight too if she wakes up. She also harrasses the poor little dog who already has to give up her space between us when madeleine shows up at 3am.

I need to get to bed so i can re-read some of that Weissbluth book!!!

[kristenk]

Wellllll...I don't know if you want to hear from me. Just consider me your bad example.

DD started doing the same thing at about the same age. Everything had been absolutely wonderful for bedtime for a very long time. DH and I figured that we had paid our dues with a child that didn't sleep through the night (for real, not just the 5 hour "official" stretch that counts as STTN) until well after a year. We had a year of blissful, easy bedtimes and then the 2.5yo terror phase started.

DD was totally freaked out. Total terror and hysteria. It was awful. We thought it would just be a short phase that we'd work through. The first night or two, we didn't really believe she was as scared as she was presenting and thought she'd eventually go to sleep on her own. i think that made her even more worked up and freaked out.

We started out staying in her room until she fell asleep. After a few days, we brought an air mattress into her room to lie down on while she was going to sleep. When she fell asleep with one of us in her room, she'd wait up around 2am, realize that she was alone again and then freak out all over again. We wanted to keep her out of our bed so one of us would go into her room and sleep on the air mattress. Doesn't this sound fun? At some point, we realized that sleeping on an air mattress in DD's room wasn't that great, so we started bringing her into our room when she woke up at 2am.

Eventually, we decided that enough was enough. She no longer seemed freaked out at bedtime. She'd still *want* us in there, but no longer really needed us in there. One day, the "Night Night Fairy" left a beautifully decorated package and letter for DD. The package had a Dora doll and the letter talked about what a big girl DD was and that it was time for everyone to sleep in their own bed. That night, I left the house at bedtime (b/c I'm the pushover) and let DH handle bedtime. She went to sleep in her own bed by herself. She asked DH to leave the door open, but that was it. So, bedtime was good.

She still woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to come to our room. We decided that we'd work on that later. Well, DD is almost 5yo and she still comes into our room in the middle of the night. We are working on getting her to stay in her own room, but, honestly, I don't mind her being with us for part of the night.

As I said, we're the bad example. When you're trying to figure out what to do, just reread this post and, if we did something you're thinking of trying, just don't do it!

Seriously, though, I think that the first several days DD was really afraid of being in her room by herself at bedtime. I don't know what else we could have done at the time. I know that we should have worked on reclaiming our evenings much sooner than we did, though.

[elektra]

Hmmm... I was going to say the opposite. DD is just about the same age (2 1/2) and I realized that she has this window of time which is perfect to get her in bed. If I miss that time (it gets too late) she gets way to overtired and when I put her in she just screams and yells so I was going to suggest putting her to be earlier. :confused:



Rachel

Yes, my initial sleep problems with DD were helped so much when I moved her bedtime earlier (at the suggestions of Dr. Weissbluth). And SIL has always put her DD to bed really early too. But I guess her "window" changed a bit and after her long afternoon naps she was just not tired at her regular early time. I thought maybe it was her age. But I definitely don't know for sure. Maybe earlier would be better in this case too!
I do need to re-look at my book though, since I was really only basing the bedtime thing on SIL. I guess I have a lot to look forward to in the next 6 months since my new baby will be arriving right when DD may be going through this scared/waking up phase! Joy to the World! ;)

[DrSally]

I totally know what you mean. It would be really hard to know what else to do in that situation. I'm not faulting you at all for bringing her in your room. DS sometimes wakes/startles in the middle of the night and I hear things like "Mommy, help me, help me, help me". He always goes right back to sleep if it's not after 6am. But man, you can hear the panic/fear, so I know toddler fears are hard.