6 year old waking at night. At my wits end. Please help me

[Bigpinksweater]

My 6 year old is waking 2-4 times a night and I am absolutely broken.

A bit of history - she started sleeping through at 1, but then went through a very long and hideous nursery illness phase and was ill practically every other week for 2 years, so obviously I got no sleep then. Just as she shook this off, I got pregnant with DS, so another year of no sleep entailed. During this year DP moved into DD’s room so I could breastfeed DS, as not sleeping is hazardous in his job.

Just as DS started sleeping through at 18 months, DP moved back into our bedroom and DD started waking up again after a good couple of years of sleeping solidly for 10 or even 12 hours a night. At first it was just one wake in the early hours, she would jump in with us and drop off so it wasn’t too much of an issue.

Slowly but surely over the months this has increased, last night was the worst yet. She woke up 1 hour after falling asleep, then every 2/3 hours until DS woke at 5am then we were all up for the day.

I am on my knees with exhaustion after 6 years of broken sleep. I have a high level chronic health problem requiring multiple meds and this has been exacerbated by the exhaustion to the extent I’m signed off work and terrified of losing my job.

Letting her sleep in our bed isn’t an option. She wants to chat, sleep talks, rolls around, and continues to wake up. We’ve tried sleeping on her floor on an airbed (1 of us) but she climbs in with us and wakes us up that way.

She has no SEN, very little screens, a very healthy low sugar diet, gets lots of fresh air every day and has had no significant life events which could have triggered this off. She has a solid bedtime routine with bath, milk, stories. She doesn’t complain of pain, snore, or have nightmares.

Tonight I absolutely lost my shit and snapped at her that tonight she can keep her light on, play with toys etc, but must not leave her bedroom and must settle herself and that if she wakes we will be taking her straight back to bed. I can hear her crying up there as DP settles DS, I feel awful but I feel like all the ‘gentle’ approaches we have taken have actually made it worse.

Has anyone else been through this and what worked, if anything? Sorry for the long post but trying to pre-empt questions.

Hi Op

please can you write down what you did? I could have written this word for word, especially the being out of control bit.

im at the end of my tether . Somethings got to change!

You say there’s no life event to have triggered this, but from reading your OP it sounds as though her dad had been sleeping in her room for 18 months, stopped doing so and then she began waking at night. So the life event (in her life) is she no longer has the comfort of her dad right next to her.

i understand that the two of you probably longed for the day your baby would sleep through and he could get back into your bed etc etc (in a completely understandable way). But too a small child a massive piece of security she has had since her sibling was born, just got taken away. It’s amazing how much things they aren’t necessarily even conscious of affect sleep.

perhaps best to go back to basics and approach it from the mindset of what she has lost and how can you work towards phasing this down, rather than suddenly changing things. Talk to her about it and look at other ways to provide her with night time security. Dad putting her to bad and reading to her, sitting with her while she goes to sleep etc might be a start… or figure out something else that works for her and you.

RTFT the OP has solved the problem by being very firm with her daughter and not letting her call the shots.

We put a mattress on the floor at the bottom of our bed with a pillow and quilt. The rules were: only come in if really upset by something (a dream perhaps), must be silent and not wake us up.

If the rules were broken the mattress vanished!

But one big difference was that she slept on her own in her own room from about 12 weeks - so sleeping on her own was the norm and the mattress routine was the exception.

My daughter didn’t sleep well intil
she was 7… never any issues… she just woke in the night…wasn’t ever naughty or looking for attention but would come in and tell us every time…then take herself back to bed… but by that time we were awake… and losing sleep… . we had to tell her that it was okay to be awake and she didn’t need to tell us… it wasn’t naughty to be awake… or bad, it was just how she was… and that lots of people wake in the night, but then roll over and go back to sleep… so she just needed to stay in her bed… we got her an Alexa with an audible subscription and downloaded some stories she knows really well… and told her I’d she couldn’t get her brain to switch off to allow her to sleep then she should put it on… this worked for us… but her understanding that we didn’t need to know was the turning point…

You're definitely right to crack down on it now. She'll cry less and less as she gets used to it. I have no idea if my 4 year old wakes up at night. I think she does wake for the toilet but just goes and then gets back in bed.

Put radio 4 on low in her room at night. It works like white noise and keeps them asleep. Worked for my nephew who woke up a lot.

Is there room to have a mattress on the floor (ready-made-up) in her room - maybe under her bed? Then, when she wakes in the night, one of you "sleep-walks" into her room and just goes to sleep on the spare mattress. Will save a lot of wear-and-tear all round in the long run.

Don't feel bad.

She needs to sleep and so do you. If there's no health issue preventing sleep, she just needs to learn to sleep.

so, did the uninterrupted sleeping start again when you had DC2?

If so, you might need to consider whether this is an insecurity/sibling envy thing. Do you spend any time with DC1 without DC2? Perhaps you could say that if she sleeps through the night every night for a week, you or DH will take her to a soft-play centre [substitute treat of choice] and have an cake in the cafe etc. something where she is centred? She could have a special chart where you and she colour it in to show what a big girl she is for sleeping and then agree rewards (that are one on one treats) that she can earn for 3 nights, 7 nights in a row etc?

Or how about telling her that her nonsense won't be tolerated and that she had to sleep in her room, and will get taken back firmly to it if she decides to get up in the night?

Which is what the OP has done, with great success.

We’ve just had this same issue with our 7 year old. She always needed somebody with her to go to sleep and out of exhaustion we used to let her sleep in our bed when she woke up. As she got bigger this just became a nightmare and nobody was getting any sleep. At the beginning of the summer holidays we got her a new bed and basically said she couldn’t get up anymore..we spent 2 nights walking her back to her bed every hour but by the third night she didn’t get up..she would cry out and I would go in and soothe her but then walk away. After a week she just stopped waking up! It’s been the best thing that we’ve ever done!

If all else fails,
you could ask the GP about a low dose of melatonin as it is naturally occurring in the body but some people don’t have enough of it to go to sleep and stay asleep throughout the night. I use it for my oldest DD and it is a life-saver. Her mood and behaviour is infinitely better. There are loads of long-term studies that show it is safe in the right dose for kids.

How is your DDs sleep now op? I could have written this word for word, last night was the worst night we've ever had so I'm determined to try some of these suggestions tonight, unfortunately my DD shares a room with her toddler sister so literally the whole house is being woken at night and we are all miserable.