Night waking tips

[swedengirl]

Hey all!

Thanks in advance for reading! My DD is an awesome nighttime sleeper generally. from 5 months she started fighting me rocking her to sleep so I tried putting her in her own cot and leaving and lo and behold she happily went to sleep. She still does that now and even waves and says good night some evenings when she’s already tired before her planned bedtime around 7. She normally sleeps 12 hours exactly in one stretch. Butttttttttt if she does wake it’s hell. She hates being rocked. She hates being in our bed. But she hates me leaving her. She wants me to pat her whilst she lays in her cot, which I do but as soon as I stop even after an hour she wakes! So if she wakes, which she does at least one a week, I’m awake for over 3 hours. I tried to wait it out yesterday and she cried for 2 hours until I went in and patted her for an hour. This is becoming a problem now I’m back at work.

I literally don’t know what to do! Normally she can’t sleep if there is someone in the room. She likes to be by herself. But the night wakings this changes.

I have found a couple of times, if I take her down and we watch some tv for 45 minutes and I take her back up and do a mini bedtime routine (bottle, sing our song) she’ll go back down. I’m worried about creating a habit wake there though!

Maybe I should add, not sure if relevant, day time naps have always been pretty short. But if we are home and she’s in her cot I get an 1h30nap now (used to be 30mins). But at daycare or in the pushchair it’s max 30 mins.

Any tips on what to do would be appreciated!!

 

[noon_child]

If you get more full nights sleep than broken ones I don't think you need to worry about creating bad habits, she sounds like she already understands when she feels tired, feels safe in her room, likes sleep etc. It may be that she just has developmental leaps going on that keep her brain too active to go in to deep sleep, or maybe bad dreams?

I'm all for doing whatever keeps you sane, so if you think the quickest way through this is to do a bit of a reset and back to bedtime routine then do it. Myself if I wake feeling upset with my heart racing - from a bad dream or whatever - find I sometimes need to get up, move around, calm down, allow my brain and body to relax. If I stay in bed I almost still stay in dream mode and odd thoughts whirr round my head. If you are worried about the TV being to stimulating (or too tempting as a reason to wake up!) maybe try 10 minutes instead of 45, then move on to a short book, sip of water, go to the toilet/change nappy, sing song and back to (fingers crossed) sleep. Or cut out the TV and have just books/songs. You don't have to go straight in to this as soon as she wakes either, it's up to you to gauge how upset she is, whether a short amount of patting will work or whether you need this 'reset'. If you find after doing this a few times her waking becomes more regular and/or the time it takes for her to fall back to sleep increases then it's time to stop that technique and try another.

I'm not sure how old your LO is but my daughter regularly woke up until she was 3. Some of that was quick breast feed and back to sleep within 10minutes, some of it was screaming in my arms for 2hrs - I think everything is developing so quickly they don't know what to do with themselves sometimes.

 

[swedengirl]

Thank you so much for your reply!!

I think your probably right about the do whatever works and that it could well be bad dreams. The past couple of nights she has woken and when I tried to bring her down she got really upset when I tried to put the tv on. It has seemed to work that I change her nappy and give her a bottle of water in her cot and leave she seems to settle- although a bit reluctantly last night but still way less than hours. I think it might be bad dreams so she doesn’t want me to leave but forgets that when I give her the bottle.

She’s 16 months and right now going through some major behavioural changes and the waking seems to have increased so guessing it probably is developmentally related too!

Again thanks so much for taking the time to reply!