My two year old son started having 'bedtime troubles' a few weeks ago. It began as a refusal to sleep in his crib and eventually progressed into full out screaming fits every time a nap or bedtime was even implied as well as wake-ups in the night that stretched for over an hour. It got to be a stressful drain on my husband and I, especially seeing as we both essentially work shift work and I am due with our second child in a month. Just as important, though, was the drain it was proving to be on our son; he was napping irregularly, crying himself to sleep, clearly agitated about something despite our very best efforts to soothe him, and exhausted most of the time.
Having tried all we could think of to keep him happy and sleeping in his room and in his crib, we eventually decided that perhaps the issue was one of simply growing out of his current bedtime arrangements. So, we set up the toddler bed that we'd been saving for when (we thought!) he was older right beside our bed, and we started putting him in there, instead.
Almost immediately he took to this new sleeping situation like a duck to water. Finally, we breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, there were some serious drawbacks to sleeping in the same room as a two year old, not the least of which was how much it impacted MY bedtime routine, but it was, we reasoned, temporary. I like to read before bed to help me sleep, and without that time I find it difficult to get rested, but I could cope. I could cope with having to get changed in the hallway or grope in the dark for pajamas. I could cope with suddenly having my bedroom 'off limits' from around 7pm onward. The plan was that once he was 'settled' in this new bed, we would simply move the bed into his room.
This far-from-idyllic-but-at-least-functional situation lasted a few weeks before Samuel started to insist on falling to sleep nursing, a habit he had dispersed with on his own ages ago. I've found nursing him to be a strain during my pregnancy, but since he seems to express no interest in weaning I've continued as I can, distracting him or saying 'no' when it isn't possible physically for me. I wasn't very keen on having nursing re-enter our night time routine again, but it seemed 'easier' to just get him to sleep any way possible to avoid crying. And it didn't take long, really, just a few minutes and he was out for the night.
Until he began creeping into our bed. At first he was fine with falling asleep in our bed and getting transferred into his own when David came home from the night shift, but that progressed into harder and harder transitions back into his own bed. Eventually, he wouldn't even lie down to sleep in his own bed at all, and even if he spent most of the night on his own mattress, many times I would wake up to find him squeezed in between us, demanding to nurse again and kicking up a huge fuss if I said no. At the same time his bedtime got later and later, eventually moving from 6:30pm, where it had been for ages, to creeping upwards of 9pm some nights. His waking time didn't change, though, to correspond to the new bedtime, remaining at around 6:30-7am. He started having terrible days without naps, and then equally terrible days with three to four hour naps in the middle of them. Some days he woke up clearly tired, cried the whole time he was up, threw multiple tantrums, and eventually crashed around 10am, and other days he sat in bed for two hours refusing to sleep no matter what we did.
As much as Samuel seemed agitated by sleeping and the routines surrounding it, it was affecting us even more. My due date crept closer and the final few weeks of work carried high stress around them in addition to my physical capabilities decreasing. David felt the strain of once more being called on to become the sole breadwinner in the house, as well as being in the midst of an intensive job search and taking on extra hours to pay for the baby's expenses. The severe lack of adequate sleep made my morning sickness resume in full force, and David, whose immune system isn't the strongest anyway, fought constant headaches and a cold that refused to budge.
On a good night we could get Samuel into a bed, any bed, by around 8pm. He often now had a list of demands that included nursing, sleeping on 'Daddy's pillow', a cup of water, food, certain toys, music on, lights on but dimmed, someone lying beside him, several books, songs and made-up stories, patting, a back scratch and numerous other 'extras' and even then I often had to creep out of the room. I've never been one to use what works for others as a yardstick with which to measure my own 'success' in parenting, but this routine was, for us, a huge problem. It wasn't working. We have a double bed and it isn't big enough for three people to sleep in, and I don't like people touching me while I sleep. I had to lie facing away from Samuel all night so he wouldn't pester me to nurse, and that gave me cramps. David couldn't even access his side of the bed with the toddler bed blocking it and had to crawl from the bottom in, which was painful for him with a bad back after a nine+ hour shift. I couldn't make my bed properly with the lack of room to move around the furniture, and that often resulted in the bottom sheet getting pulled up in the night leaving David and I sleeping on a bare mattress.
And still, despite it all, Samuel wouldn't sleep well.
Finally, tonight I was done. I gave him fair warning at 7:45 that tonight was an 8pm bedtime. No later. Frankly, I think this is too late as it is, but I also knew he'd slept for 3 hours this afternoon and my chances of anything earlier were nil. I offered to nurse him, but only in a chair in the livingroom, no nursing in bed. And no cups of water, either; several times a week I've been changing sheets drenched with pee from an over-watered boy or water from an over-filled cup, and I'm tired of the laundry. He didn't put up a fuss when I said 'bedtime', and duly followed me into the room.
The first conflict we encountered was where everyone was going to sleep. I showed him his bed, with his pillow and special blanket, and his stuffed toys and told him that he would sleep there tonight. I promised that I would lie beside him in bed while we read our story together, and although we had a bit of fussing it never became crying and the first hurdle was jumped.
Next we read our story, had a kiss and a hug, and I tucked him in and told him I would be back to check on him later and got up to leave. The second conflict loomed as he wanted companionship to fall asleep. I promised him several times I would be back, and I was only in the next room if he needed me, and eventually he was reassured enough to lie down and let me go with, again, a minimum of fussing. Problem two dealt with.
I wandered around the house not getting involved in any one project because I knew that the third big issue was about to start. Inevitably, I get called back into the room every night and Samuel demands that I lie down with him, or nurse him, or fetch him something he's forgotten. If I ignore these protests, they get louder and more shrill and are accompanied by the pattering of little feet into the hallway! If he's marched back to bed, tears ensue and the process starts from square one again.
Tonight was no different and about 10 minutes after 'lights out' I heard the tell-tale "Mommy!" coming from behind my door. Sure enough, tonight he wanted me to lie down with him and nurse. Instead, I had what I can only think of as a flash of divine insight and rather than lying down I sat on the end of the toddler bed and quietly told Samuel that it was bedtime and that sometimes it was hard to sleep alone, and so tonight we were going to talk to Jesus about it together. He was pretty reluctant, but I squeezed my eyes shut and clasped my hands to show that I wasn't talking to him anymore, and started to pray.
At first my prayers were as they usually are when I pray with my son, simplistic and easy to understand, very much of the 'thank you God for Mommy and Daddy' variety. Tonight a funny thing happened, as I was praying for Samuel aloud, my prayers became more than lip-service and I found myself praying for him truly, as I would on my own. I'm not certain, thinking back on it, that my son has ever seen me really pray; I tend to pray in silence and alone. He was listening, though, and I heard him mimic back a few words. At the end of our few minutes together I told Samuel again that Jesus was right here with him, and that if he needed to, he could talk to Jesus as well whenever he felt like it. I told him I would be in the house and I would check on him later, and I got up and left.
There was a momentary fuss, and then some mild muttering could be heard as he chattered himself to sleep, but within ten minutes silence had descended on the bedroom. When I peeked in later he was asleep still in his own bed, under the covers, and with his head on the pillow rather than with covers strewn everywhere, toys thrown in frustration and lying half on his bed and, defiantly, half on ours.
I don't know exactly what to make of this, but if prayer helps him sleep well (and I guess we'll know tomorrow) then prayer it shall be!
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