good ol sleep issues and a new one coming!!

[ohnoauntflo]

Hi,

not sure if anyone remembers me but I'm the one who'se baby would only sleep while I bounced on the excercise ball....
Well baby is now almost 14 months old and we have retired from bouncing on the ball... Now, dd sleeps on a matress on the floor IN HER OWN ROOM
and it is working out fine as she sleeps through the night and all i had to do was lie down with her, cover my head up with a bLanket and she
will soon fall asleep. I have to do this because otherwise she will be tooooo occupied with playing with my face and hair (more like pulling my hair and scratching my face). So I wrap myself up and she tries to poke my head but soon gives up and falls asleep. This happens for every nap and night sleep ever since she was about 10 months.

I am now half way through my second pregnancy. I have tried just giving her the bottle while she is sleepy and leaving her in her bedroom , shut the door behind me but as soon as she sees me leave or sometimes she will finish her bottle and crawl to the door and knock while screaming "maa maaaaaaa" till i open the door.
i don't know how im going to deal with her sleep times when i have the baby. i can't keep lying down with her waiting for her to drop off as sometimes she takes anywhere between 15-1.5 hours to fall asleep. My hubby works and is hardly home for her nap and sleep times. I'm worried that when baby comes i am forced to change things around and she will feel it?

these past few days shes been waking up at 5 30 in the morning and having a hissy fit. this morning she scratched my face, pulled my hair and kicked me while she had the tantrum. all i was trying to do was put her back to sleep peacefully. shes only 1 year and 2 months!

why does she do this? how do i fix this? HHHHEELLLLPPPP!!! i only have 20 weeks left for my pregnancy

[onthefly]

Sometimes these things have a way of just working themselves out.
And if not, you may find you're able to lie down feeding your new baby while your DD goes to sleep next to you.
In my personal experience, I have never had any luck with trying to force changes - but it all fell into place with time. She's gone from the fitball to her own room, so you've already experienced big changes to date.

[Cass72]

I remember you!

I can't really help you but for what it's worth.....

I could only ever put our LO into bed when he was completely asleep. I don't know how it happened but we gradually weaned from being all the way asleep to being awake when put into bed. It didn't happen over night by any means, it just "happened".

Our routine had always been feed to sleep (in the rocking chair in his room). Sometime after he stopped BFing (and we moved onto bottle) he started being drowsy rather than asleep. Now he's mostly awake but well into that zone and will just lay down and drop off to sleep. If he is wide awake and definitely not about to go to sleep (read yelling out/crying) I will let it go another half hour and then try again (sans bottle only rocking).

Exactly what MadB said: Sometimes these things have a way of just working themselves out.

[JLeigh29]

Wow, sounds like you're having a tough time atm. I think the longer you wait to change things, the closer it'll be to the arrival of #2 and DD might relate the two and feel resentful iykwim.

Do you want gentle parenting advice? Are you wanting to change where she sleeps, how she gets to sleep, do you want to stop camping out? Whatever you do, it'll take time, commitment and patience on your part. I'd recommend taking a look at the raising children network stuff though.

Everyone is different and I'm not 100% sure if you want advice like this or not, but if it was me, this is what I'd try. Establish or continue her bed/nap time routine. Tell her it's sleep time and put her to bed. Lie down with her like you're doing. The next step is to gradually move away, little by little over a week or two. Start with doing what you're doing but move away a few more inches when she gets really drowsy. Then you can start lying further away and start moving away when she's a little bit less sleepy. Gradually you can lie at the door when it's nap time and hopefully in a few weeks you'll be able to put her down and go! Oooh, it sounds so simple, doesn't it?! If only!

Does she have a cot or are you happy having her sleep on a mattress on the floor? When she screams out at you, is she crying and upset, or just loud and annoying iykwim? Can you ignore the calling out, tell her before you put her down that Mummy won't come if she yells out (but Mummy will come if she's upset) and that if she can't sleep she still has to lie in her bed and rest? What does she do when you go in? Do you resettle her and can you leave again? I know she's only little, but you might be surprised at what she'll understand over time.

I hope you find the solution you're looking for. GL