How to stop the night wakings?

"Jamie Clark" wrote:

"Rosalie B." wrote in message
.. .
cjra wrote:

I have described the house set up repeatedly, perhaps you missed it.
There are not very many rooms in the house. Every other area is OPEN.
It's a smallish house. There's not some side area to put her, so yeah,
wherever she'd be outside the bedroom would be in a common living
space.

Yes I answered before I read the post where you described it again,
and I was not paying attention in the beginning as I did not co-sleep
and did not have much trouble with night waking after about 6 months.

I do live in a pre Civil War house (in the US), but it is two stories.
And very well insulated for noise. Dd#2 was determined that she was
going to be in the band playing with her sister, but we had just moved
and the school system we moved to started instrumental music in 3rd
grade, and she was in 5th grade so way behind. She wanted to get up
and practice before school, but dh said absolutely not, that he wasn't
going to be wakened up at O dark 30 with the screeching of a clarinet.
So DD#2 went downstairs into the 'new' wing (c 1930) and shut herself
in the half bath off the kitchen and she could practice there without
waking her dad. And my son's rock band used to practice in the
living room which is right under our bedroom - made the house vibrate
a bit.

It sounds like you are a whole family of problem sleepers.g. And
that's the problem more than the house.


It sounds to me like she has a family of light sleepers, not problem
sleepers. And she clearly has a small ranch style house, where every room

Wanting a specific mattress, not wanting white noise, and not being
able to sleep where there is talking or the like means problem sleeper
to me and cjra also mentioned that her parents laughed hysterically
when she complains which means to me that they probably had the same
problems with her or at any rate SOME problems.

pretty much opens onto the public rooms -- be it living room, kitchen or
dinning room. I've lived in houses and apartments like that, where life
went on as usual on the other side of your door. Now I live in a large 2
story home, and there are all sorts of places I can go to be out of sight or
earshot from my dh or kids, with or without shutting a door.

I am a very light sleeper. I can't sleep with noise or lights. I can't
sleep sitting up (in an airplane, train, or car, for example). I don't fall
asleep with the TV on, either in bed, or downstairs while watching. Dh
can't stay up in bed and read, or even use a laptop, as that would be too
much light for me and it would keep me awake.

My dh can't fall asleep on an airplane either, nor can he sleep in
shifts on our boat which is a BIG problem for him, because I refuse to
go offshore with him until he can sleep, because it isn't safe for him
to be making the kind of decisions that one make when dealing with the
weather or landfall in a sleep deprived state. So unless he can train
himself (and I firmly believe that it is possible for someone to train
themselves to sleep when it is necessary), he's not going. I don't
think he's quite to the point that he will go off without me.

Dh, on the other hand, can sleep almost anywhere. He is a heavy sleeper,
and routinely falls asleep on the sofa in the middle of a show, or during a
movie, or in bed while I have the overhead light on and am getting ready for
bed, etc. It takes a bit to wake him in the middle of the night. The kids
can be up and down 3-4 times, in and out of our room, talking, etc, and he
hears none of it.

I don't think this is heavy vs light. It is what the person has
trained themselves to do. I was a sound sleeper until I had children.
Then I had to train myself to wake up and go back to sleep again.

cjra wrote:

btw - I don't mean to sound so flippant. I really appreciate all the
helpful advice from this thread and I'm processing it to figure out
what might and what might not be feasible in our situation. I find,
though, that more and more extreme suggestions are offered, getting
away from the original problem, and then I'm accused of making excuses
when I say those just aren't reasonable in the current situation. As a
last resort, maybe, but I don't think we're there yet.

I'm just thinking that odds are you're not very likely
to accomplish the goal of having her and you sleep through
soundly without different rooms, but it sounds like that leaves
you with the move the bed scenario, the improve the bed scenario,
or the DH suffers on the less comfortable bed scenario. By all
means, I think you should try easier methods first, and I certainly
hope they work. My gut is just whispering to me that you're less
likely to have success until you're in separate rooms.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article , Rosalie B. says...

I don't think this is heavy vs light. It is what the person has
trained themselves to do. I was a sound sleeper until I had children.
Then I had to train myself to wake up and go back to sleep again.

Actually I think it's easier to wake up and go back to sleep again if you're a
sound sleeper. I think a lot of problem with light sleep is not being able to
get to that sleeping state. It's the light sleepers who have trouble falling
asleep again, so the wakings are so problematic.

As a deep sleeper I did have no problem awaking to my son when he did wake up, I
guess I can attune to the specific sounds and disturbances I need to wake up
about. And furhtermore I was able to take calls from work when I was doing work
in microchip manufacturing, which is around-the-clock. I found that easier than
a lot of peole because I can wake up, do whatever is necessary, from nursing a
baby to analysing a process test and giving parameters for the next lot, then go
right back to sleep.

Banty

cjra wrote:
On Mar 13, 7:59 am, Ericka Kammerer wrote:
cjra wrote:

I think you have to make some distinctions here. If you
are nearby and she is screaming at night, one of two things is
most likely happening (assuming she's not sick): she's hungry
or she just wants to play with you. The ultimate solution to
the former is more food during the day. You can work that issue
on the positive side (trying to get more in during the day), the
negative side (refusing to further the habit of eating at night
so she'll be hungrier during the day), or both.

We've been working the positive side a lot, but how do you get a kid
to eat more? I am sure I said this elsewhere in this thread, but I
think part of it is that she does eat a lot during the day at daycare,
so at 6pm she's not so hungry. The few nights she hasn't fallen asleep
and it's 8pm, I give her food and she gobbles it down. So I'm not sure
if we should try to cut back on food during the day. I think she eats
a little less during the day at home on the weekends just because
we're doing other stuff more, so she tends to eat more at night, but
doesn't necessarily sleep better.

If the food consumed during the day doesn't have any
relation to sleep, it may be that none of the night waking is
due to hunger, in which case that's at least one problem you
don't have to solve ;-)

If she wants play
time (whether that's active play time or cuddle time), you cannot
afford to feed that habit if you want any of you to get a good
night's sleep. Some kids are very flexible, but it sounds like
your daughter is much more determined than that, so if you give
in once, that's good for a month's worth of effort to break the
habit again.

I think you know my daughter ;-).

We seem to produce stubborn kids ;-)

Yeah, she's determined, so this is
clear where we need to stop this habit. She has often been middle of
the night party girl. We keep everything quiet and calm, but she'd do
things like push the button on the gloworm and start dancing to the
music.

I think the only saving grace we had was that I am *so*
not good with night waking that my kids never had play time at
night--not because I was so disciplined, but because I'm such a
bear at night!

Very good point. What's funny is that in everything else in life, she
has very strong-willed parents. She just turned out to be stronger! I
never worried about being a weak willed parent before since it's so
totally opposite of my personality, but this little one figured out
how to work us....

Well, they've got nothing better to do with their lives!
They don't even have to be all that clever. They've got enough
time that they can rely on trial and error to get them where they
want to be!

Now, the tricky bit with this is that especially with
some strong-willed children, having you standing there patting her
on the back may actually prolong the crying because it keeps giving
her hope that you'll cave. That's something you just have to decide
for yourself. I know it's awful to walk away with them crying,
but it's also awful to stand there with them crying. And, of
course, it's awful to continue a habit that's detrimental to
both of you. No easy answers. Personally, I'd likely tackle this
issue last and hope tackling the others magically solves it ;-)

Well, that's my hope. But as time goes by and I get more desperate,
I'm more able to walk away from her screaming.

That's what saves a lot of us, ultimately ;-)

Now with better weather we're spending more time outside in the
evenings playing, and I'm with her all evening til she sleeps, and
then all day on the weekends (which is why it's so hard to work on our
house!).

And that is a really good chunk of time. It sounds
like she's in a great situation overall, so there's no reason
to feel as though she requires the Mommy time in the middle of
the night.

Best wishes,
Ericka

I'm just thinking that odds are you're not very likely
to accomplish the goal of having her and you sleep through
soundly without different rooms.

Unfortunately, based on what I'm hearing, I'd tend to agree, not
necessarily because of the disturbance of lack of it when slipping
(though it is a factor) because if it's going to be a tough process,
then a tough process can become more bearable when there are 2 doors
between you and it. When I was finally convinced that DS's night feeds
were not needed nutritionally we did the method known an controlled
crying, we only were able to stick with it by the fact that the crying
was more tolerable when you weren't in the same room as it, we also used
a timer and instead of pretending we were trying to sleep, we just
switched the light on, sat up in bed and chatted, read etc, whilst
watching that timer. I know this method wouldn't work for every child,
but I think the key to it working for us was that we stuck to absolutely
rigidly.

Cheers
Anne

On Mar 14, 7:03*pm, Ericka Kammerer wrote:
cjra wrote:
btw - I don't mean to sound so flippant. I really appreciate all the
helpful advice from this thread and I'm processing it to figure out
what might and what might not be feasible in our situation. I find,
though, that more and more extreme suggestions are offered, getting
away from the original problem, and then I'm accused of making excuses
when I say those just aren't reasonable in the current situation. As a
last resort, maybe, but I don't think we're there yet.

* * * * I'm just thinking that odds are you're not very likely
to accomplish the goal of having her and you sleep through
soundly without different rooms,

Possibly true. Maybe we should go straight to that, but I'm unable to
convince my DH of that (wonder where DD gets her stubborness from? And
he blames me!) and we're willing to try this first.

but it sounds like that leaves
you with the move the bed scenario, the improve the bed scenario,
or the DH suffers on the less comfortable bed scenario. *

Honestly I'm all for the last scenario, since I sleep on that very
comfy bed every night. We might be able to block off that room with
some effort, we'll see when we get to that point which is the best
solution.

"cjra" wrote in message
...
I'm trying to figure out how I can still have
her in that room, with DH, and sleep.

I'm 95% sure that if when she wakes up he lays there and lets her cry with
only a hand on her back she will start sleeping through (for the most part)
while co-sleeping. I think you could even be in there too. Do not get up
with her, do not feed her, do not do more then say "Time to sleep" and lay
your hand on her. It is CIO except you are right next to her so
considerably gentler. It would also work to plunk her in the crib and do
the same thing but the crying would likely be more intense and take more
days.

I never had luck with laying next to but separate from with my hand on them
(i.e. crib next to bed) but it would be worth a shot.


--
Nikki, mama to
Hunter 4/99
Luke 4/01
Brock 4/06
Ben 4/06

On Mar 14, 5:29*pm, Rosalie B. wrote:


Wanting a specific mattress, not wanting white noise, and not being
able to sleep where there is talking or the like means problem sleeper
to me and cjra also mentioned that her parents laughed hysterically
when she complains which means to me that they probably had the same
problems with her or at any rate SOME problems.

I never suggested otherwise about myself. Yes, I have a problem
sleeping. Same as when I was a kid. That's why my parents laugh, they
say it's karma. But I wasn't discussing *my* sleep issues. I was
discussing my daughter's.

As for DH, yeah, he has some specific needs, but he doesn't have a
problem sleeping usually. He can wake up and fall back to sleep
easily. The mattress is an issue because he has a bad back, and his
mattress (which he had shipped to the US from Europe when he moved
here) works for him. He claims mine does not. His white noise (or lack
thereof) are just his issues.

All that said, I'm not sure why any of that matters, except that maybe
DD inherited my sleep problems.

I don't think this is heavy vs light. *It is what the person has
trained themselves to do. *I was a sound sleeper until I had children.
Then I had to train myself to wake up and go back to sleep again

My dad can sleep like a log, but say one word and he's up in a second.
My sister who's an MD is the same way - which is fortunate for her as
she often had to take advantage of short intervals for sleep. One
brother is also like that. My mom too. No one trained themselves,
that's just how they are. I don't know about the rest of my siblings,
but I've always had issues with insomnia.

Sleep problems are not something I'd choose, and I don't think they're
very simple to overcome. My parents treated/trained me sleep-wise the
same as my 6 older siblings. I still had problem sleeping as a kid.

"cjra" wrote in message
...

Thanks again for all your suggestions. I really appreciate the help.
I've decided for my next child, I'm ordering a sleeper, with a really
calm personality ;-)

Good luck with that order, lol.

It sounds a good plan!!

Give us an update in a couple of weeks - good luck.


--
Nikki, mama to
Hunter 4/99
Luke 4/01
Brock 4/06
Ben 4/06

cjra wrote:
Thanks to all for your helpful suggestions. After discussing various
options with DH, here's what we're going to do for at least 10 days.
Pantley claims 10 days, if at that point it's not working, we'll
reevaluate and if it looks like we're making progress, we'll try
another 10 days. If not at all, then we'll re-think it.

it's my intention to see if I can dig up data on the habit thing, I've
seen the 21 days in so many places, but I don't know if it's one data
point that has propagated, or whether there is more evidence behind it.
Obviously if what you try makes you all miserable then you may prefer to
stop anyway, but if it's no worse than before, you don't want to give up
too soon! I suspect though that if it is going to work you'll notice
some changes and it's repeating what made those changes that makes it
stick. I suddenly hit an uber busy couple of days, so I'm going to have
to be disciplined and not go google it now, maybe tomorrow evening or
Sunday!

Anne