Help! Don't want to fight to get him to sleep...

Would love some help, ideas, encouragement... :cry:

I'm currently having some difficulty getting DS2 (10 months old tomorrow!!) to sleep at night, it's only this week that things have changed but it's been a looong week.

He is protesting every time i put him to bed of an evening and it's starting to upset me. He's not one to rock, last night (was trying to put him to bed at 8pm) he didn't even want a bf and squirmed in my arms until we left his room. He was in my arms when i was checking DS1 and he gave him a big huge grin :shakehead: He just didn't want to go to bed plain and simple i think.

I don't think it's his teeth, (we have a teething necklace) he got his first 2 teeth on Christmas day and to me he is not showing me signs of being in pain. Not even any red cheeks!!! If that's because of the necklace i'm impressed!!!!!

There is absolutely no settling him with out a fight and i just don't want to do it with him. I generally try and get him to sleep about 7:30ish but lately i do this but end up having him up again and finally get him to sleep about 9pm (will happily go to sleep with out protesting).

I'm posting in the Gentle Parenting area because i consider myself to be a gentle parent but as to what peoples opinions of Gentle Parenting involves i'm not entirely sure. I can't fight him like this every night if this is what he's choosing for himself at this 'stage' i can't do it to him and i can't do it to me. BUT bed time at 9pm for a 10 month old is too late in my opinion!! To be a gentle parent do i have to just let him choose when he decides to go to bed?

I never had these struggles with DS1 who is extremely palcid and when it was bed time off he went no questions asked. DS2 is very different and i am still learning how to achieve this with the same/similar ease.

I'm getting upset with myself and my capabilities, i don't want to put my little man through this but he needs to go to bed.

What do i do to achieve some calm of an evening???

I may not be of much help as I don't think an early bedtime is that essential when they are so young. When DS was that young, he would not go to bed that early either. I put him to bed when he started showing signs he was getting tired, and if it was 9:00 or 10:00, or even 11:00 then that was fine with me (any earlier and it was a battle I just did not want to have). As long as he was getting enough sleep through naps and such I didn't worry.

Now that he's is older though (and we have programs to go to in the morning) we have made bedtime earlier since we have to get up earlier. We just gradually moved the bedtime up earlier and earlier in 15 minute increments. 8:30pm is still the earliest though that he will go to bed, but he sleeps until 8:30am and still has 2-4 hours in the afternoon. Works great for us.

I have a friend whose 3 children are in bed at 6:30pm every night. This works great for her but to me that is way too early as it means they wake up at 5:30am. I am not able to wake up that early.

I think you're doing great and I think that whatever works for you is best. Try not to worry too much about what the clock says and what time you think he should be in bed by. He'll eventually start getting sleepy earlier.

it's possible your little man is going through a wonder week - key signs are an upset sleep routine and a need to be close to mum (or dad) all the time!

i have found my DD is doing similar (and she too is approaching a wonder week) - she is refusing her afternoon sleep for hours on end - doing my head in - but we're working with her instead of fighting it - i know we can work on a more solid routine later...

is he maybe getting too much sleep during the day or waking up later in the afternoon so that when bedtime rolls around he is just not as tired. If this is the case then maybe wake him up half an hour earlier from his day sleeps or do something in the arvo to tire him out and use up the energy like have a little play outside before dinner chasing after a ball or after dinner. At 10 months old you could plonk him down on a blanket (even though if he is crawling he probably won't stay there) with some toys and stuff, a change of scenery might be enough to get him a bit more tired because there is more too look at.
Otherwise just follow his cues for now and slowly put him to bed a bit earlier every few days and eventually get to a time that you are happy with...

Sounds a bit like my DS! As soon as we hit the bedroom its partytime! I've given up on the set bedtime thing. Instead he goes down about 4 hours after his afternoon nap (if its a good one of say 1.5 hours) or 3 hours after if its a short one, i.e 30 minutes and that works so much better! I tend to cave if its too much of a battle and let him get up for a little longer and try again 10 - 15 minutes later and this has almost never backfired on us!

oh hun i completely understand, going through similar issues here!!

Thanks ladies, what you say does help. Sorry about the meltdown :redface:

Twin sister, reading your expereince and from living mine i think i would be willing to give what you do a try. DS1 was just ready for bed by 6pm every night so i am new to the protesting and adjusting to the later nights sleep. I'm trying my best to understand what it is that DS2 wants. Thanks so much :)

Briggsy's girl it could be a wonderweek (although i actually hadn't heard of that expression before), he's a little bit clingy at the moment :)

Thanks for the other suggestions also, i'm going to give it all a try to hopefully not have to have tears every night. Hopefully it's just for as short while :)

Good luck to you too Olive, i hope it's short lived for you also :)

It's so tiring isn't it!

Gentle parenting doesn't mean just letting him choose his own bed time. To me it means using gentle techniques, and trying to understand why things are happening so you can fix the source, rather than fight the wrong battle. At that age sleep can suddenly turn to poo. Unfortunately it is quite common, and happens at a time when many mums are back in the swing of life again and need rest.

There are things you can do though. As has been suggested, one of the first things I'd look at his day time routine. It might be time to cut out a day sleep, or change the time of a day sleep. It might be that he is ready to increase his food intake. Have there been any changes in his life recently - have you returned to work, moved, dad been around more or less - anything that is different? Quite probably there were changes to the normal routines with Christmas - perhaps visitors, being out more etc, and sometimes that's enough. Or returning from holidays.

Sometime it can help to give your little one an extra milk feed, or solids snack before bed, or to change the routine so that the bath is the last thing before bed. If he is seeking comfort, spending more time with him during the day might help. Would you be able to spend some time wearing him in the sling, or sitting with him reading stories or singing. I'm sure you already spend lots of time with him, but he might be craving more one-on-one time with you just at this point. When you have other kids the sling can be a big help, as he can be close to you while you do other things.

Hopefully something here will fit your situation and work for you. Let us know how you go. Best of luck hun.

Thanks for your post MantaRay he's definately thrown me for a six this week. I think he's deciding it's time to tell me the way things go.

This began on Monday after i'd had the day out Sunday. We rarely go out before a morning sleep but this day we did because of the distance we were travelling. It just seems as though one day out of routine has messed us up big time. As yet i'm not back at work but i will be next month and in preperation for this he has been going to fdc one day a week. The carer (who DS1 has been going to for 2 years) has said he's very curisy and happy there. So these are a couple of things that could be distrupting him.

He's a very busy boy and just doesn't seem to want to stop and the evenings have been that way until 9pm all this week. I'm going to try and make some changes to our day time routine to see if we can change these evenings but i'm not sure. I think he's decided he'll go to bed when the sun goes to bed.

Tonight was a repeat of what we've been going through. Today he slept from 9:30am-12:30am (great sleep) I put him back down again by 3pm (which used to work fine) but he wouldn't go to sleep, i re-wrapped him a couple of times but no luck. I got him up and we went and got a few groceries together and came home for more of a play, had some dinner and then i put him to bed at 6pm. This was early but he hadn't slept since 12:30pm so i felt it was well and truely time he got some sleep. He slept 40min and then woke. I tried to feed him and get him back to sleep with no luck. At 9pm he had a good feed and went to sleep without a tear.

Tomorrow i'm going to try and get my head around a few changes and hope for a different evening. I can handle the 9pm if know he's had an afternoon sleep of some kind.

Thanks again for your help and for listening to my rambling :redface:

He's pushing Thomas the Tank around and 10pm at night :wall:

I thought i could do this but i can't, it's just not right to me...

Today was good, he slept well all night woke up at 8am, had breakfast a play lunch and was in bed again by 12pm. He slept for 3 hours. Had a great afternoon, had dinner and was in bed by 7pm (up 4hours). He slept an hour, this is and has been very common on and off for him. I don't know why :dunno: I got him up put him in the pram and we went for a walk. He was awake the whole time. Gave him a bf and put him to bed but he fought me. If i stay with him in his room he still won't lie down, if i hold him he struggles and grunts the whole time trying to get out. All i could do was let him go...

What do i do? What is wrong with him? He's like a child possessed. It's not that he just wants me he just wanted to be let go to play. I can handle tantrums and fussy eaters with ease but this is killing me. He's a baby :o

Meltdown # 2 :redface: Sorry

Myboys, hun - I'm sorry you're having such a difficult time :hug:

It sounds like he might be going through what I found was a difficult transition of dropping a nap in the day and having just one nap a day. It's a hard time - especially if and when you combine that with developmental progress that is going on (wonder week stuff), which is what happened to us as well.

Some suggestions I can make:

Since the last few days you've mentioned he is only having one nap, it could be that the timing of this nap is really important now, if he's ready to sustain that one nap a day. You might have to trial it and see what happens if you let him have that one long day nap earlier or later. He maybe overtired by the time 7pm comes around if he's been up since 3pm, and when my DD is overtired, she will wake after one sleep cycle at night and this happened to us a lot at first when dropping to one nap. Or, alternatively, you might try and see if he has a slightly earlier nap he may be able to hold out and having a longer spell of awake time and then that may help him get past that first sleep cycle. It could also be a matter that whilst he's ready for one nap a day, 3 hours is too long in the day now to leave him sufficiently tired enough to go into a long sleep for night at bedtime. In that case, waking him a little earlier from his nap (I know they say not to wake a sleeping baby, but for me when it was a choice between big issues at bedtime and not waking up my sleeping child, I know what I chose) and helping him adjust and guiding him through the transition of balancing day sleep needs and awake time with night sleep may help too.

Alternatively, coming from a totally different angle you could try seeing if having two quite short naps in the day is what would work, or even an earlier wake up time first thing in the morning. This doesn't necessarily mean waking him up from a nap, although it could if you were comfortable with it - it could mean trying to encourage him to have a nap earlier in the day and see if he only needs a shorter nap before another awake stretch and the same again, instead of waiting until he seems tired.

These are all just suggestions, and it may well be a matter of trial and error figuring out what will work for your DS.

As your DS sounds like he is really getting stimulating by his environment at his age now, how dark is the room he is sleeping in? If he is waking up after one sleep cycle (as my DD did in our transition) having a too much light in the room might be enough for him to think that it's time to actually get up (it was actually stimulus enough to cause my DD to wake up in the first place), especially if he has have slept very deeply in that first sleep cycle, which babies will often do when they are really really tired - it's like he's waking up fairly refreshed and ready to go again. Especially if he's previously been used to having a long first nap in the day, and a shorter refreshing one in the afternoon - it might be really confusing for him. Can you make his room quite dark with blackout curtains/material?

Also, is there much noise in the house at the time he is waking? Because everything is stimulating him, he may be waking up fully when in a light sleep when he hears noise in the house, and he wants to be a part of it. It's a pest, but we have to be really careful with noise in our house at the 40min end of sleep cycle time too, as too many noises can make DD wake up fully at that time.

Is your DS close to crawling/walking? These are things that can also contribute - they often compulsively practise new physical skills and things they are learning even when overtired, and sometimes even when asleep, waking themselves up. In that case, sometimes it's a case of just riding it out, unfortunately.

It is a big transition, going to one nap and day, and it can really take some time for your DS to adjust in the amount of sleep he needs versus the amount of time he is able to be awake in a stretch (this is where a mismatch can happen that makes the transition so hard sometimes). But if you can control the environment your DS sleeps in and experiment and figure out what your DS's sleeping needs are at this transition time, you are doing all you can from a gentle parenting perspective.

Just remember that 9-12 months is prime age for sleep regression again, because there is so much development happening in those little brains, so it can be a really hard time for some babies, making it really hard time for mums, but it will pass - I promise, and I can say after 3 months of trial and error and sleeping difficulties with my DD, we seem to be coming through it now (although don't get me started on middle of the night wake-ups last night! :D)

I know it's a reeeeeeeally long post, but I wanted to give you some suggestions of the things we tried and found did and didn't work for us in this difficult time. I hope you are able to find something that works - I'm sure you will :hug: Really hope the info is helpful, and one thing I always tried to remember when I was struggling was that when your bub can pick up that you're stressed and anxious about him going to sleep, he is more likely not to remain calm and sleepy too.

Big hugs to you :hug:

Thanks so much for all your ideas. In the moment i stuggle sometimes and i wish i could relax a bit and just go with him. I have my ideas.. he has his.. there has to me a happy medium somehow.

Today his big brother is at day care so he has my undivided attention and i'm going to play with him, give him lots of hugs and kisses and just see where the day takes us. I'm feeling a bit guilty and feel like i owe him. I'm hoping things will sort themselves out soon :pray::)