You Thought Newborn Sleep Was Bad!!

It has been a long week.  A very long week.  Tate and I have struggled, and I mean struggled, especially with him going to sleep or more accurately staying in the bed.  Ugh.  It's just been awful.  Combined that with his intense clinginess lately and incessant whining and I'm about to go around the bend.   

We do still share a room and we've been sharing my bed since we returned from Ottawa.  I used to put him in his crib and he'd simply go to sleep.  Before we went on our trip, he was starting to climb out every now and again, but it wasn't a real problem.  Cue my mistake.  I should have made my displeasure a bit more obvious I suppose.  He would sometimes play in the crib for 30-45 minutes before falling asleep especially if he had taken a nap at daycare, but more often than not he wasn't napping at daycare.

Well not this week.  He napped every single day.  And bedtimes were a disaster.  I let him play until 7 instead of 6:30 most nights as I figured he wouldn't go to sleep until later, and there was no reason to prolong our agony.  Monday night he didn't go to sleep until 10.  10! Tuesday morning I had to wake him up at 6:30 making us rush in the  morning.  I just knew he wouldn't nap on Tuesday with the later wake-up.

Nope.  He napped!  Up until 9:30 Tuesday night.

But this isn't the worst of it.  The worst was trying to get him to stay in the bed.  O.M.G.  I have never been so frustrated.  I tried the whole Super Nanny approach of outwardly 'calmly' taking back to the bedroom and not speaking to him.  10 times later and I opted to let my inner feelings be known.  I threatened.  I yelled.  I stomped around.  He lost 4 trains and a coloring book.  All to no avail.  Finally, he was asleep like I said at 10 and 9:30 with me laying beside him.

I went shopping Wednesday and prepared a sticker chart.  Actually a train sticker chart.  I bought some Cat in the Hat stickers and I bought a few cheap toys.  I told him if he stayed in the bed he could put one sticker on one train car and he could pick out one toy.  He saw the toys and knew exactly what he wanted.

Wednesday night I put him in bed and laid down with him like I always have (I just usually put him in the crib after a few minutes).  He asked me to leave because he needed to stay in the bed so he could get his new train toy in the morning, so it seemed he had the concept.  Mind you this was at 8:30 already.  I came on downstairs and all was silent for a good long while.  And then I heard the door open and there was Tate!  Quiet and thoughtful.  I took him back to bed and reminded him he'd just lost his special toy.  Five minutes later he returned.  I put him back in the bed and sat in the rocker next to the bed, turned the rocker around and rocked and fell asleep myself.  Around 9:15 I turned back around and he was asleep.  Same thing last night.  He was keen on staying in bed, but he simply could not do it.  After the second pop-up I again got in the rocker and turned away from him.  He was asleep by 9.

He woke up this morning at 5:56, so he didn't have nearly enough sleep.  The whining began in earnest, and he refused to go back to sleep, making for a very long, EARLY morning for me.  I refused to let him watch his precious train on my phone, and I refused to get out of bed.

At 6:24 he came up to me and told me his pants were wet.  Yep.  He had peed.  On himself.  My child who knows exactly how to take himself to the bathroom located in the room we sleep in.  He tends to do this when he's mad at me which infuriates me to no end, because I know it's purposeful.  I told him to take his pants off and he'd have to be cold.  More whining.  

I finally got up about 10 minutes and gave him some new bottoms to put on;  I'm not a total meanie.  He climbed up into bed with me (with freezing cold feet!), but we only cuddled about 5 minutes, thus our day began.

So with his not falling asleep until 9 or 10 I get no downtime.  I rush around cleaning up after he goes to bed late.  Luckily I've always prepared his lunch when I clean up our dinner dishes, so if nothing else gets done we are ready for the following day.  I don't always eat dinner with him, so a couple of nights I was eating cheese and crackers seemingly at 9:30.  

I'm just exhausted.

My sister thinks he needs his own room and that should alleviate some of this.  Though I agree he needs his own room, and I'm actually in the process of getting him a mattress for converting his crib to the double bed and getting the decor together, I wonder if that's really going to make a difference or make it worse.  We shall see.

My plan for now is to sit in the rocker for 2-3 more nights as he goes to sleep.  Then I shall move to sit in my fainting couch which is a bit farther away. Then I'll sit by the door for a few days, then in the doorway.  Then just outside the door with it closed for a few days.

Because I think he's simply worried I'm going to leave.

Hopefully this will help alleviate this concern for my sweet boy.

Tonight, however I rocked his cute little bum to sleep since he didn't nap today!!!  I knew if I rocked him he would be asleep within minutes at a very reasonable time.  And I was right.  He was out at 7:30.  I probably could have done the rocking chair thing and let him go to sleep on his own, but I simply didn't have it in me tonight.  

So I rocked my 3y7m old to sleep.  

It was lovely.