Help getting DD to sleep at a reasonable hour..

[LisaL]

Hi, my cheeky DD is 7mo and has started to go down at night between 10 -11pm. She used to go down around 8.30-9pm, but since she was teething about a month ago, her routine has goen out of wack. A typical day goes something like this
8.00am - Wake up/brekky/ small play
9.30 Nap
11.00am - wake, play, eat etc

Somedays she has an afternoon nap, other days she wants to nap at 6pm.

THen she has dinner, bath etc and just refuses to sleep even though she is tired and shows the normal tired signs and starts to get delirious.

I try putting her down but she just plays in bed, and stands up now so when tired she is continuously falling over and bumping her head so then that creates more drama. She goes to sleep on her own but we cant do controlled crying as she jumps up and down in her cot, falls over, hurts herself and then becomes hysterical. I dont want her bangig her head on the cot every night just so I can get her to sleep.

Im going nuts, dont know what to do to help her get down earlier. I have tried to put her down in my bed and comfort her, tried rocking her in my arms, tried the pram, but she just cries and wants to stand up and dance. So I have to play with her until she is at the point where she just cant fight anymore, and this can take up to 2 hours.

Last night she went down at 11 and was up at 6.30 this morning, I gave her milk and we had a little cuddle and now she is having a nap.

TIA

[aussienic]

the only suggestion I have is to go for a walk after dinner and a bath.. Maybe being outside in the open air will help her sleep.. downside is she may fall asleep in her pram..

Another option I guess is to sit by her bed and lay her down each time she stands up. and rub her back or just sit and read a book or something

good Luck.

[Ozziehoffy]

I can't offer much advice.... I know that there are times when Oskar is soooo tired as well, but won't sleep and just cries louder and louder if I dare put him down (either on my bed or in his cot)... so then as you said, that makes it even worse and harder to settle them. If Oskar is like this after about 5/10 mins I bring him back out to the lounge room and sometimes reading a book with dad helps - I allow 5/10 mins then try again. I find that the less worked up he is the better it is to put him down - so he's not associating sleep with something bad IYKWIM?

[Olive]

she certainly sounds overtired, i would be trying to get her to have an afternoon sleep much earlier than 6pm! she should be getting ready for bed at that time, i think you;ll find if she has an earlier sleep it may help at bedtime.
otherwise give her tea earlier and put her down for the night at 6pm

[bubbaloo]

Hi LisaL,

To reduce the problem of bubs falling and hitting her head, have you thought of letting her sleep in a portacot for a month or so until she is a bit more coordinated in getting back down? The sides are much softer on the head than wood!

My DS sleeps in a portacot beside my bed (with a proper mattress... There's not enough room for his real cot - expensive darn thing that still hasn't been used as I quite like having DS sleep nearby! ) and it was wonderful when he was going through that stage. Every time I put him down for a nap he would stand straight back up and fall, and back up and fall, and back up and fall (well you get the idea!) until he eventually wore himself out and fell asleep. At least with the soft sides of the portacot he wasn't hurting himself each time he fell.

Of course, changing to a different cot might just create a whole other set of problems for you...

Cheers,

[Olive]

how did you go over the course of the day today?

my DD had only one nap today (she normally has 2x 45 mins) and has just gone to bed for the night at 6.30, she's 17 months old

do you have the same bedtime routine?

[LisaL]

Hi - she went down for her afternoon nap at 3 and got up at 4.30 so that helped with bedtime. I took her to mums where she played for a while and we went for a walk, so by the time we got home, she was very tired and fell asleep while having her bottle in bed.

I find that when she has two good naps during the day, she settles at night very easily, but its the days where she doesnt nap well that she is up at all hours! I will try reading books, and feeding her tea earlier in the hope that might start to establish a new routine.

AJP - no I dont have the same bedtime routine..could that be my problem? We tend to do something different everyday - depending on what mood the little Miss is in. Hmmmm..now you have me thinking. I think I might try to keep a bedtime routine for a few days and see how that goes.

Thanks ladies

[Janie]

Hi Lis!

I agree that the routine can help. We used to be VERY hit and miss with DS's bedtime, and routine. Things are better now though, more settled.

I would think your DD is way too young to only be having one sleep, she's probably not going to sleep at night because she's overtired. Not blaming you hun, BTDT myself many a time! We recently went to sleep school (no cc) because he was so overtired and we just couldn't break the cycle. Fortunately things are looking much better now.

I would suggest that you start a night time routine, say dinner, bath, milk, book, bed. When she stands up in her cot, lie her down again - over and over. It gets very tiring, but she will eventually go to sleep. Don't stress if it's not as early as you would like - DS doesn't go to bed until somewhere between 7 and 8, which is later than alot of bubs. But it works for him, if I put him down much before 7 we just have a shocking night.

I HTHs in some way hun, I know how hard it is! Please PM me if you want any of my sleep school tips (I promise it's easy ).

[Olive]

lisa glas she had another sleep yesterday!
remember sleep creats sleep, and been overtired makes it very hard for them to settle off to sleep, they simply cant do it!
i agree that 1 sleep at 7 months isnt enough i think sophie was still having 4 at that age!! which was a little extreme i know! but she needs at least two!

like janie said id try a bedtime routine, if sophie is going to go down at 7pm we do dinner at around 5pm, bath at 6.30, boob, which now is around 30 secs then bed

we've always done the same routine, even if we miss the bath some nights, she still knows when its bedtime

goodluck with the routine and let us know how you go

[KymH]

I also found that we used to have a very random routine, but around 7/8 months it was almost as though DD NEEDED a bit more structure and routine.... it can still be "infant-led" to a certain degree, so you don't feel like your lives become imprisoning (I'm not a routine person myself).

And what I learnt too, was that after getting "out of whack" that sometimes we just needed to be disciplined in a pattern for a week or 2, then once settled again, the routine could be played with....

I agree with many others too.... she sounds overtired and I think 2 sleeps is pretty important at that age.... my DD was still doing 3 at that time and didn't drop to 2 sleeps until around 9ish months...

But as they say... they are all different! All the best.

[Emma1979]

i second taking her outside and getting fresh air... it does seem to tire them out....

it works a treat with my 13month dd, we take her outside to play on the slide, sandpit, cubby, grass, whatever, all the fresh air and excitement of exploring somewhere so different from the boring loungeroom seems to really exhaust her... obviously at 8 months you can't do the same thing, but maybe a rug outside on the grass with some crawling and exploring the texture of the grass, point out the trees and different objects and she will learn the names of things and develop language and start to point at the objects when you ask her to... also, have you tried swimming - another trick to exhaust them... maybe a splash in the local heated pool and then home for an afternoon nap... who knows worth a shot!!

good luck, it gets easier!!

[LisaL]

Hi ladies,

Thanks for the advice. Well we had some luck and she was going down at around 8.30-9.30 for a few days, but the last few days have become crazy again. Yesterday she refused to sleep all day, by 4pm a very frustrated me took her for a walk. Sure enough she fell asleep in the pram and slept for 2 whole hours, but again she wouldnt go down at night. She finally fell asleep at around 10.30pm. I know she is overtired, but she just fights the sleepiness, so I feel like im back at square one.

Emma - im going to try the park thing tomorrow. I took her out for a few hours today (to mums and the shops) and she managed to fall asleep tonight without too much trouble, and she had two naps today.

She has also become very clingy these last two days, she doesnt want me out of her site, as soon as i leave the room she screams her head off. She has been a bit fluey and was vomitting tonight so maybe she is coming down with something?

Oh I dont know, I just need some rest LOL!

[mihnister]

how did you go with the bedtime routine / ritual?

my baby is younger than yours so this might not apply. he is 5 months now.

but

it used to take up to an hour of constant rocking to get him to bed at night; sometimes two hours, with a few attempts at feeding-to-sleep thrown in. (this was at 4 months)
Then,
I implemented a set bedtime and a routine of bath, pyjamas, feed, story, wrap, lights out, music on, cuddle, cot. And stuck to a target of a 6:30-7pm bedtime every night. I even woke him up for the bedtime routine! At "official bedtime", i would not give up on getting him to sleep even if it took hours. After "official bedtime", all wakings were either resettle-to-sleep or, feed then straight to bed - no playtime. I got this idea for implementing bedtime from the no-cry sleep solutions book.

After 1-2 weeks of this, the nighttime struggles stopped. No more evening crying sessions.

Maybe he grew out of it, but I think it was the routine.