Another Sleep Thread

[honda13]

Please tell me I'm not alone, or that this too shall pass.  Something, anything.

DD has been a great sleeper.  Consistent 12 hours at night for a long time.  Not a humblebrag, just info for reference.  On and off should would wake up if she was sick or teething.  After the illness had passed she would go right back to normal. 

The last month or so she has started waking up SCREAMING in the middle of the night.  Sometimes more than once.  She goes right to an 11 and will not stop until we go in there.  She has been working on a ton of teeth at once (6 or 8), but it seems they have all broken through.  I'm not sure if that is the cause of her crap sleep.  My other thought is separation anxiety.  She has a fit when someone leaves the room and will cry even if that person is still in her view.  So could she be waking up at night and freaking out because she's alone?  If it is separation anxiety what the hell do I do about it?  We are getting her big girl room ready so she can move in there before this baby comes, but if her sleep doesn't improve I don't see that working out at all.  Should I do cry it out again?  I need help and really hope someone has some btdt insight.

TL;DR my kid has become a crap sleeper and I don't know how to fix it.

Dancing cookie for your time.

[marygracerich]

If it were me, I would let her CIO 😕I know that sounds like a crappy option when your kid is upset but sleep is important. Do you have a video monitor? If you do at least you will be able to see that nothing is really wrong when she cries.

[honda13]

marygracerich, I might have to. I feel like she is getting use to us coming in there and calming her. Previously, she would calm herself down after a little noise, but lately it's like she forgot how. I will feel bad letting her cry since it's her "I'm very upset, why aren't you helping me, end of the world" scream, cry, gag. We don't have a video monitor, yet. I have been pricing them out with two cameras so we have one for the new baby too. Our audio monitor is on the fritz and I'd like to be able to see what's going on in her room.

[marygracerich]

honda13 I don't have a video monitor but I have been pricing them as well. It may be worth it for you for the peace it will bring knowing she is ok but being a toddler.
G has been waking in the night too but just to party not crying. I have started lowering the baby monitor as low as it goes so I don't hear it. If she were crying I would hear her because we share a wall. MH gets up for work around 4:30ish and he turns it up before he goes downstairs so that I will hear her when she wakes up.

[honda13]

marygracerich, thanks. The nursery shares a wall with us as well. So I would still hear her and would be able to intervene if I felt it was going on for too long. That's pretty much what we did when we did CIO as a baby. I turned off the monitor because I knew I would still be able to hear her if she NEEDED me. Hopefully, this will help the situation. I've also noticed she gets really hyper just before bedtime so we started having quiet time before bed. Somethings gotta give.

[robotpcr]

Sorry, sleep issues suck so bad. Assuming you can't pinpoint another cause (illness, etc) I would do CIO personally too.

[honda13]

I've thought about having mh take her to the dr just to be sure. Then I feel like if there is nothing wrong we look like wackos.

[radtechgirl]

Do you have a night light in her room? We keep a small lamp on that has a red light so R can see around his room.

[honda13]

Feb 1, 2017 14:59:31 GMT -5 radtechgirl said:

Do you have a night light in her room? We keep a small lamp on that has a red light so R can see around his room.

We do not have a night light. It's worth trying! Thanks!

[sarahdawn]

Have her ears been checked?

[ajm0711]

K occasionally does this in the middle of the night. I normally go in first to make sure everything is ok/reassure her and cover her back up. Then I leave. If she's still upset, I let her CIO. She normally lies back down within 10 minutes.

[cosmicav]

We also have a night light and LO loves it. I second that idea for sure! It helps when he wakes up so he's not just in a dark place he can't see anything in.

LO went through a phase like this a few months back with awful, sad MOTN screaming and it was terrible but it only lasted about a week or so. I hope you get some peace from it soon because sleep phases like this suck :[

[honda13]

Feb 1, 2017 18:53:11 GMT -5 sarahdawn said:

Have her ears been checked?

No, but MH is off tomorrow and I insisted he take her to the pedi.  She doesn't have the usual symptoms she gets with an ear infection, but I would like to rule that out before letting her CIO.

[theroar]

When winding down for sleep, A and I have started talking about what to do when she wakes up in the middle of the night. Take a deep breath, hug your dream animal, close your eyes, and imagine a happy place or activity. Currently, that's a little walk we took past a llama farm, so she says, "I see llamas!" I think it's been helping, but it could just be coincidence that she's finally doing less of that screaming.

[theroar]

I should add that we were late transitions out of cosleeping and nursing in the night, so our situation might be substantially different.

[lilbarn]

We're still having issues too. The last few nights DS has only gone to sleep while lying against me and then I have to put him to bed asleep. Doesn't help that we spent most of yesterday out of the house so he had 2 sleeps in his car seat, the last of which was at about 3pm. There was no point trying to keep him awake either, we were over 2 hours from home.

There seems to be some separation anxiety going on too. The issues all started after we went out for dinner and movie one night and left DS with my mum.