How to get your child to sleep..

.... beats me!!

Sorry folks.  Were you hoping for an answer?  If you were, don't worry, we're in the same boat.  If you happen to know the answer, share it, please!!

Felix is now 2 years and 5 months old.  In all that time he has "slept through" a mere handful of times.  Never have we reached a stage where he has slept well consistently.  The best we have ever had is a couple of nights together where he might have slept from 8pm-6am.  That would be an amazing night.  Most nights are more like this:

6pm - TV off (if it was on) or a relaxing/calming program.
6:30pm - Bath time
7pm - Stories & milk in bed
7:20pm - Lights off

So far, so good, right?  This is where the "fun" begins.  Some nights he might fall happily asleep by himself. Sometimes with his milk, sometimes just tucked up and left to his own devices.  But he is just as likely to kick up a fuss.  We tuck him in, give him a kiss, leave the room and then it starts:

"Mummy, I want you to cuggle me!"

I ignore him for a bit.  After a while I pop in.  Tell him he doesn't need me to stay, he's safe and sound.  I leave the room.  He's quiet for a bit.  Then it's:

"I want some water! Where's my water?"

I know he's more than likely after attention.  I don't go straight in.  Sometimes he'll go quiet.  If he's rampining up, I'll pop my head round the door and remind him where his water is.

All goes quiet for a while.  It might stay quiet for 10 minutes or so.  Then there will be a wail of:

"I want to do a weeeeee on the pottttttyyyyyyy!"

Felix is more than capable of taking his night nappy and clothes off and doing a wee on the potty but I also know that he is then likely to attempt to empty the potty down the loo.  That's a mess I could do without, especially on new carpets.  So, yet again, I'll find myself in his room.

Once the wee has been dealt with I'll tuck him in again.  This time I'll make sure my voice is very firm, tell him he HAS to stay in bed.  He needs to sleep.  We all need to sleep.  It's night time.  Everyone is sleeping (ha!) and Mummy & Daddy are extra happy when he stays in bed and sleeps.  Usually this works and he goes off to sleep.

It's now about 8:30pm and Pete and I still won't have eaten.  We usually manage to eat around 8:45-9pm.  It has been as late as 10:30pm before.

Once we've eaten, we are, of course, worn out.  I rarely have the impetus to work on the blog at this stage (that's why you see so little from me!).  As we moved house recently, we spend these precious moments trying to put pictures up or choosing our potential bathroom suite!  Sometimes I do risk staying up late to work on blog work or magazine work.  Or even doing things in the house.  You can guarantee that the night I stay up until 1am Felix will wake at 2am.

Nights with Felix are varied.  At the moment he mostly wakes at 4am.  He'll want milk.  We've tried cutting milk out during the night before.  After 5 weeks of screaming every night we gave up.  If he has milk at the moment he'll likely want a wee shortly after.  This has been our issue most recently.  Because he's been potty trained during the day for a few months now he's very aware of when he needs to wee and understandably doesn't want to "wet" himself.  His nappy is just for when he's asleep.  He's no where near the stage of having that taken away because it's always soaking in the morning.   In fact, we often have to do a nappy change and potty visit during the nap.  Often, if he's woken at around 4am it can be very hard work to get him back to sleep.  Sometimes he just doesn't..  So our days often start very early.

I've heard just about all the advice out there.  I KNOW that if he had less milk he'd likely wee less at night and possibly sleep better.  It can be very hard to get him to fall asleep without milk at times though.  Milk is a source of comfort for him.  He's not attached to any of his toys.  He has never taken a dummy.  It's his milk bottle or having Mummy/Daddy near by.  That's it.  We know all about having a concrete predictable regular bedtime routine- we have one! Always have.  It's hard dealing with this kind of behavior if you are conically sleep deprived.  We are often so grumpy and fed up.  Both Pete and I have felt very low at times due to the lack of sleep/disturbed nights.  We have both said that the joy in life has gone.  What is there to look forward to?  We have no energy to do anything?!

Every now and then Felix will throw us a life line.  The odd sleep through.  Like last night.  Just when we were teetering on the edge he slept from 7:30pm-6:30pm.  Bloody amazing.   I feel on top of the world today.  Well.. Not quite that good.  I'm still missing a good few years worth of sleep, but I feel a darn sight better.  We all do.  Felix's mood is better when he's slept well.  He's a nicer child to be with and we are nicer parents.

Why can't he just do it more often?  Life would be SO much better!

My friend sent me a link a Woman's Hour radio show from the other week that featured sleep tips from Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin, the author of the now famous book, The Rabbit Who Wants To Fall Asleep.  Well, it just so happens I bought that book back in August.  The first night I read it to Felix I was skeptical.  Would it work?  Well, do you know what?  It did.  That first night.  But it has never EVER worked again.  Bugger.

How does the book work?  It uses NLP (neural linguistic programming).  The types or words, the way they are put together and the tone of voice you use.  It does work.  It's a little like hypnotism.  It has been successful for a lot of people.  The technique is sound.  I have found that if I talk to Felix using this type of language/tone then it really helps him relax and "come down" from a real tantrum.  I don't think it was a waste of money, my purchase of this book.  I just don't think it's a magical answer for us.

I know I'm not the only one with a bad sleeper.  Do your little ones sleep well?  Have you any tips?  Something I may not have tried?  Despite sleeping well last night I'm too experienced in "Felix" to think it'll happen again soon!  Perhaps I should start a sleep deprived support group.  Except I haven't the energy...

Dropping the night feed - Night Two

Two nights down... but in that time, I've had less than one good nights sleep.  Woe.

How did last night go?  Well, it was made a lot harder by the fact that Ethan came home from school feeling very poorly.  The poor sole.  When I arrived to pick him up at the end of the school day he was beside himself, crying, sobbing and almost inconsolable.  He was complaining of a sore throat and a painful mouth.  I don't think it's the Hand, Foot & Mouth that Felix has had (though goodness knows because I've read that some children have it but don't display any of the traditional signs, they may just have a temperature, none of the rashes).  I think it's a bog standard cold/virus.  The trouble with my two is that as soon as they have a hint of illness their temperatures spike and they get very feverish.

Ethan calmed down when I got him home and got some calpol into him and he went to bed happily enough.  However, he woke up at 3am asking if he could have a wheat bag warmed up because he was freezing cold (his temperature indicated otherwise, but you know what fevers are like!).  I then spent two hours with him getting him back to sleep.  In the end he settled in bed with us and dropped off around 5am.  I tried to get to sleep and was just feeling drowsy when Felix woke at 5:30 am.  Pete went into him and offered him some water and a little cuddle.  He then left his room..

..cue 15 minutes of crying and grumbling.... As I'd been awake for quite a while at this point and I didn't want Ethan being woken again I decided to go in to Felix and try to calm him down a little.  I picked him up, gave him some more water and then sat with him in his chair for a while, cuddling him.  Once I felt he was calm, after about 10 minutes, I placed him back in his cot and rubbed his back for a few minutes.  I then left the room.  Unsurprisingly he kicked up a fuss but it wasn't like before and was really more of a grumble.

He carried on intermittently grumbling and chatting to himself until around 7am.  We were all starting to get drowsy again and on the verge of dropping off when Pete's alarm went off.. as it's Saturday and none of us work weekends there was no need for us to be woken up at 7am so this was rather unfortunate.  We think he put it on by mistake last night.. an autopilot thing!  Felix heard the alarm and of course, he associates it with "time to get up" so that was that really.  Time to start the day.  I'd been awake since 3am again!

Pete has taken Felix out for the day which is a blessing.  Ethan obviously isn't feeling up to doing anything, and needs to rest at home.  I'm looking after him.  It's quite nice really.  Obviously it's not the ideal way to spend time with your child, I don't like having ill children but I do enjoy spending time one on one with Ethan, especially since he started school.  We've been snuggling up on the sofa, eating home made rocky road (I had the ingredients in the cupboard and it's so easy to make!) and we've watched Elf.

Let's see what tonight brings!!  I'm hoping Ethan is well enough to sleep through which will hopefully mean I don't get tag teamed by the monkeys and get a bit more than 3 or 4 hours sleep.

Anyone else out there going through this just now?

Dropping the night feed - Night One.

If you've read some of my recent posts, you'll be well aware of the fact that Felix does not sleep through at over 17 months old, apart from on 6 magical and random nights.  Every night he wakes at some point, it could be at any time from 1am - 5am and we've always gone in to him and given him a bottle of milk and settled him back down.

Until about 14 months old this wasn't too much of an issue.  He'd wake for his feed, one of us would pop in with the milk, feed him and then put him down again.  The feed would take about 10-15 minutes and often he'd fall asleep during it.  After putting him back in his cot whoever was feeding him would head back to bed and sleep on.  This was fine.  However,about three months ago, this pattern changed.  His feeds started taking a LOOOOOOOOONG time.  He'd be taking 45 minutes or more to drink the bottle.  Our reaction to this was to start just giving him the bottle in his cot and leaving him to it.  Not perfect, but it meant he was happy and we all got back to sleep.  Sorted.

And then... it wasn't sorted.  Not any more.  No.  About 6 weeks ago, Felix started happily drinking his milk in his cot but not falling asleep.  No, after the feed, he'd stay awake and start kicking up a fuss in his cot.  He wasn't screaming or super upset, he'd grumble, cry a bit, moan, go quiet, cry for a minute or two, moan, chat to himself, go quiet, cry, moan.  This would go on for up to two hours.  We're not sure why this started happening.  A wonder week?  A growth spurt?  Teething?  Either way, it was happening and it didn't stop.

The trouble is that when Felix is awake, I am awake.  I am sensitive to every move and sound he makes.  I've never needed to use a baby monitor, I've always woken up for both of my boys.  Often I wake just before they do, like some kind of sixth sense.  If he's crying and moaning, it's even worse.  Going in to him didn't seem to help.  What he really wanted was to fall asleep lying on me and be transferred to his cot... but this isn't a solution for us.

Everyone's sleep has been affected by these night wakings.  Ethan has been woken several times.  Often what happens is that Felix will wake at about 4am, be awake and making noise until about 6am at which point he'll drop off and Ethan will wake up.

For the last few weeks I've felt like the walking dead.  Normally I am a night owl, for years I've not gone to bed later earlier than midnight.  Sometimes I would work on my blog until 1 or 2am once a week.  I can no longer do this.  Most nights I am now in bed by 9:30-10pm which is super early for me.  I feel like I am surviving life rather than living it.  I am constantly tired and yawning.  I feel like everything is suffering.  I don't have the time or energy that I'd like for my blog.  I feel sluggish and don't feel like I have the brainpower or energy to deal with my boys.

I've had enough.  After a discussion with Pete, we've decided to try to cut the night feed out.  It's not helping Felix get back to sleep any more.  He's 17 months old, he really shouldn't need to have 7oz of milk to get him through the night.  We've tried watering it down in an attempt to make it not worth waking up for, but that hasn't worked.  We decided it was time to go cold turkey.  Just not give him a feed.

Last night, Thursday night, we decided to do it.  No night feed!! So, what happened?

Well... it was pretty tiring, I can tell you that much!  Felix woke at 3am.  I went in to him.  I picked him up, gave him a few sips of water from his water bottle and gave him a quick cuddle,  I then placed him back in his cot and patted him on the back for a minute.  Then I left the room..

At first, he was quiet.. but only for a minute or two.  He cried a bit, then called out for me.  He spent a good why calling:

"Mummy! Mummy! Cuggle!!! Cuggle!".

Then he'd go quiet for a bit.

He cried and grumbled on and off for an hour and a half.  I didn't go back in to him because I felt he never reached the point of true upset.  Don't get me wrong, I don't like hearing him crying and calling out for me.  It's horrible.  But at the same time, for my sanity, I need him to sleep so I can sleep.

After an hour and a half he spent 15 minutes quietly chatting to himself and then, a little while before 5am he fell asleep again.

I never fell asleep again.  I am sitting here typing this feeling even more exhausted than ever after 3 and a half hours sleep.  Big boo :-(

I am hoping, praying even, that tonight, when he wakes (and I have no doubt he will wake) that he doesn't take quite so long to go back to sleep.  I hope that I'm doing the right thing.  I'm already on medication for anxiety.  I really REALLY need to be able to sleep properly again.  I have had enough and I feel very worn down and low.