I feel like this is our new family slogan! Hudson will be 2years old TOMORROW! (holy cow!) and for some reason the bedtime wars have started over again. This time they include stalling and screaming! He is perfectly fine until you actually walk out of the room. He's been bathed, fed, bottled (yes, he still takes a bottle because thats the only way I can get him to drink milk...don't judge me ;) He's gone potty and brushed teeth. We've read a story, sang a song, prayed. He has, not one but, TWO blankets and his passy and his sound machine is on. He's not afraid of the dark, and he hasn't always done this.
WHAT THE HECK IS THE PROBLEM?
When you first bring your kids home from the hospital, yeh of course they don't sleep much as newborns....they want to eat all the time. Eventually (if you are lucky) you can get them on some sort of routine, and even if they wake up in the middle of the night, you feed them and you BOTH go back to sleep. When our kids learned how to pull up on things we generally went through a phase of having to go in there rooms and lay them back down, because for some weird reason they crawled up the crib rails in their sleep?!
(maybe my kids are just weird? Ha!)
BOTH of our kids have slept through the night at 6 months, they sleep with ALL the sleep props we could find (and they would except).....passy, blankie, and sound machine (who cares what the books say...right?) They both LOVE their own bed (thank Goodness) and they never wanted to be rocked or cuddled to sleep.
You just laid them down and that was that!
With the exception of teething, we have really had great kids who had GREAT, if not FANTASTIC sleep schedules. So, maybe I am just spoiled? Maybe my expectations are too much?
Maybe I am just getting a taste of what "its really like"?
Now its generally a fight to get Hudson to actually give in to the idea that it's bed time. Riley for some weird reason wakes up most nights at 10:30 or 11am to SUCK DOWN a bottle (even though during the day she barely wants to take one) They both wake up around 5:45 or 6am...wanting a bottle or if it's Hudson, its SOMETHING different every time. More so Riley than Hudson, but sometimes they will go back to sleep. We try not to "get up" until 7 or 7:30am. I am exhausted by the time morning comes, which means I am exhausted all day! not to mention the lack of sleep Hudson gets from all of his fighting sleep, he is sooo grumpy and whiny until nap time, sometimes afterwards too.
I am by no means complaining, more so voicing my frustration with myself. I know moms are tired all the time. I can deal with that. Really I just want to know if I am alone in this?! and if I am.... any suggestions on how to get a 2 year old to sleep without WW3 breaking out? One day I would like to move him to a "big boy bed" mainly because he is potty trained....but I fear that he will just get up whenever the heck he wants to.
I think i might stop reading this book to Hudson
(one of his favorites, BTW)...he is getting the wrong idea! :)
I have NO advice to give you here...
ReplyDeleteDmitri just started sleeping through the night at 15 months...and he's not super consistent with it. And he majorly fights bedtime...Sigh.
One thing that I've chosen to do, which I don't necessarily know that its the best, but if he is really really restless, I just let him play until he gets tired. Even if that means not going to bed at "bedtime". Honestly, its just NOT worth the fight for me. I hate spending my entire evening going through bedtime routines, and then him refusing to go to sleep. So, we are a little flexible, but it also seems to be more peaceful for me and him.