Middle of the night crisis!

[user1479136681]

It's currently 3.30am and LO has been awake since midnight and I have been awake since 6.30am yesterday! I'm literally so tired I feel dizzy and LO is obviously exhausted but nothing we have tried will get him to calm down or sleep.

We've tried:

• cuddles & head rubs in bed (usually works)
• bedtime milk and calpol
• just so many episodes of Tik Tak
• doing the whole bedtime routine again with stories etc
• bringing him into bed with us

At this point everyone is at the end of the rope and I'm ashamed to say I've lost it and shouted at him really loudly :( My wife is supposed to be at work at 5.30am - this is a nightmare!

This is completely unlike him and I don't know what to do basically??! Any tips?

Forgot to say he's 22 months old and been with us for 10 months - he usually takes a while to go to sleep but he's always slept through

Not an adopter but a suggestion until someone else comes along can you try skin to skin?

Apologise for shouting and give him a hug.

Can your wife sleep in another bed? I'd have her move and then put on some more Tik Tak. Tell him doesn't have to sleep but he needs to be quiet and still.

Good luck!

My DD wakes up at night and find it difficult to sleep at night. We found audiobook occupies her and she falls asleep with it. I think it is the voice that she hears that helps her.

Just writing to say you're not alone! This is by far the worst bit about kids. My 18 month old has turned into an awful sleeper lately. He sleeps for ten-twenty mins and is then up for twenty mins, over a period of a few hours in the night, so I do get a bit.

I'm in bed with him now which consists of me getting climbed on, headbutted, hit and screamed at. We start every night like this too until he falls asleep. I hate it with a passion. It will either pass or it will carry on but then at least he'll be verbal and tell us the problem.

I've no idea what it is. He used to fall asleep and go through too.

Is he too hot or cold?
Drink of water?
White noise or ocean noises or a sound he connects with
A bath?

I'm saying all this and my strategy is to lie here and wait which is achieving f all.

Wishing sleep for you soon. Its an annoying cliche but you also need to sleep too. I'm not sure what your relationship rules are but we do a night on night off and one lie in each the weekend. Do you have this so you can catch up?. Also there is no shame in napping during the day.

My birth child used to do this occasionally for no obvious reason, I totally get that you shouted at him, when your tired it's almost impossible to keep calm. I used to shout too and then feel horrendous later! Eventually we figured out the best thing to do was stop fighting him if he obviously wasn't going to sleep then I'd take him down stairs and put the TV on then I'd just doze on the sofa, eventually he'd fall asleep and I'd carry him back upstairs and we'd both go to bed for a few hours. I made sure I wasn't in bed too late while he was in this phase so I could get a few hours before he woke up. He's now 4 and although he still wakes sometimes multiple times a night he setlles quickly and goes back to sleep.

Are you thinking he might be poorly (giving him calpol) - if so I think it’s just one of those things. I know when mine are I’ll I’m looking at a long night because they just don’t settle when they feel I’ll.

@Jellycatspyjamas he's got his last through teeth coming through and causing him some problems so I thought maybe the pain woke him up and gave him calpol. He eventually did fall asleep on my wife on the sofa and she put him in the cot, then we all slept from 5-10am.

Tonight we're having the same problem though. He's clearly knackered but he won't sleep. He fell asleep on the mat while I was getting his PJs on, he was dozing and falling asleep while we read the story but the moment we put him into the cot he turned into a screaming banshee. I can't figure it out.

He screams for us but shouts at us and hits us when we go near him. So instead of a cuddle I just put a pillow and duvet on the floor and lay there for a while. But he was just standing there screaming. He's screaming now but I had to leave the room because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep regulated.

Same thing when we put him in our bed last night, just screaming and hitting and trying to get things off the nightstand.

Something has set him off but I can't figure it out for the life of me.

E.g last night we dozed on the sofa for a bit and he did fall asleep, but when we put him back in the cot he woke up and started screaming. That's when I shouted at him :( I'm so tired and I feel like the worst parent ever!

That has clarified the issue. The molars are the most painful. Ibuprofen worked better on our little one. They also take a long time to get through.

It might be related to him being poorly/having an infection - can you get him checked over?

In relation to getting him to sleep during the day, going for a walk in the pram or drive in the car, the warmth and motion is soothing. Let him sleep where he is once asleep.

He fell asleep on the mat while I was getting his PJs on, he was dozing and falling asleep while we read the story but the moment we put him into the cot he turned into a screaming banshee next time could you just keep him on your lap and let him sleep on you?

You’ll have many many moments of feeling like the worst parent ever - it’s part of the deal I think. And you knew to leave the room before you lost it, which is good self awareness.

You’ll have moments of absolute delight and everything in between but just now it sounds like everyone’s running on empty. Has anything new been added to his room that might have spooked him?

OP just as a ps to my post above, when my dc were a similar age they would behave in an uncharacteristic way such as chucking their toys around when poorly, on one occasion one had a chest infection. I am not saying it is this, as a pp says it might be the molars, or it might be upset about something else, just giving you a heads up that acting up may be this.

Thanks @sassygromit I'd like to get him checked out just in case, although our GP is currently closed due to covid cases. I think it's likely to be teeth now because he's also having really bad teething poos. As for falling asleep on our lap we used to do that but he was asking for the cot and flailing around, he doesn't want to sleep on laps either! Also I need to sleep D:

@freedomisnow will try ibuprofen although I'm not happy to hear they take ages! Noooo!

@Jellycatspyjamas that's a good suggestion, but nothing has been added or even removed from his room lately. This past week has been a joyful week and I've had lots of fun with him. So this has come out of nowhere!

Although one major thing also is that my wife had to go away to work overnight, she's been WFH for months but she's on a big job where she has to travel and stay away Monday nights now. Not ideal at all :( this started after she went away last week and tomorrow she's off again.

Although one major thing also is that my wife had to go away to work overnight, she's been WFH for months but she's on a big job where she has to travel and stay away Monday nights now. Not ideal at all sad this started after she went away last week and tomorrow she's off again.

There you go, I’d bet my house on this being part of it - remember he’s used to people disappearing on him so may well be panicking or fearful that she won’t come back (on a very basic level). I had to be away from home around the same point in placement although my two were older.

He might be too young to understand the idea of a transitional object but could your wife give him something to keep safe while she’s away (so that he knows she’s coming back). My kids would give me a favourite cuddle toy and I’d send photos of them doing stuff like sitting on the train with me, next to me in “meetings” etc and send them back. We also developed a special way of saying goodnight that we always do - so if I have to be away I’ll always phone at bedtime and say our special goodnight.

We also have a calendar marked with the days I’m away so they can literally cross them off. When I’m getting ready to go to work I’ll talk about what I’ll be doing, and what they’ll be doing and how much I’ll miss them. When I come home we talk about what I did, what they did and how much I missed them. The idea is to build bonds that hold while she is away - literally the definition of attachment. When he wakes up it might help to chat about his mum, really light tough but “I’m really missing mummy, let’s look at her picture, and see when she’s going to be home again”. The nature of insecure attachment is that children think if you’re not there you don’t exist anymore and developmentally he doesn’t quite have capacity to understand that she will be different to other carers who have gone.

He needs to know that she comes back, and he doesn’t know that yet so bedtime will be tricky for a while, until he knows reliably that she comes back. It comes up at bedtime, I think, because that’s when they are tired, and vulnerable and when they need their carer.

How did it go tonight op?

It went much better tonight! He went down no problem, really nice and chilled and we had a cuddle.

Today I put more effort into helping him remember that mum will be back soon, we wrote it on the calendar together, I showed him on the map where she is and we walked to a nearby building site so he could see what mum does when she's at work (now he thinks she drives a digger though). We video chatted at tea time and I put her PJ top in the cot with him so he could smell her. I also told him about the photo she keeps in her wallet and that she's looking at it and can't wait to come back.

I also told him that I'm here just downstairs and I can watch him on the monitor so he's not alone. We then looked at ourselves through the monitor for a bit. I think that helped too.

Either that or the ibuprofen did the trick 🤣 fingers crossed he stays asleep!

It's very unfortunate as my wife was in a more senior role which was all office based but after some lockdown redundancies she's back on the on-site jobs. Booo!

I forgot to add @Jellycatspyjamas I love the cuddle toy and photos idea!! When he's a bit older we'll definitely do that.

You sound like you’ve done a great job - I love letting him see what she does at work and wouldn’t every boy want a mum that drives a digger 😂

That's great news, I hope the night continues to go well for you! Sounds like you've done lots to enable him to understand.

Thank you for sharing. Your post and @jellycatspyjamas good advice was helpful to me too and helped me reflect on how I was handling (read not) my little ones sleep issues.

Oh bless him. It is v much a reaction typical of a child that is panicking. One of his safe people has gone AWOL and he didnt have the capacity to understand she would return. With his early experiences of loss and trauma he will be flailing around emotionally and nor able to understand any of it. I have had foster children who have done the same at a much older age. They want you to comfort them but cannot let themselves allow you to because of the fear that you will leave them as well. Hence the hitting and pushing you away. It is all at a subconscious level of course but sometimes it helps to verbalize it for them. So lots of wondering aloud saying I wonder if you are missing mummy and worried she might forget about you and not come back . Then loads of reassurance that mummy is thinking of you all the time and missing you etc. And good idea to mark it on the calendar.

You sound like you have navigated a tricky situation v well so no more guilt allowed. Pat yourself on the back at figuring it out because sometimes this stuff us so subtle and complex it is hard to unravel it .

When our Lo came to us at 12 Months we found getting them to sleep was a nightmare so I feel for you.

Ours did not have a good schedule before coming to us so and even nearly two years latter we still stick to it strictly.

We found a Rockit portable baby rocker from amazon, it attaches to his push chair and this worked for us really quickly. This really was a game changer and saved us a lot of stress.

It was a life saver.

Thanks @flapjackfairy your post reminded me to be kind to myself too! But I feel so guilty about shouting at him. I also sometimes forget about the rejection being subconscious etc and I jump straight to like "I'm being overbearing and he needs his own space." Idk I will usually be present but not try to pick him up/hug him and I just sit on the floor next to him instead which I know is the right thing. But other times if I'm feeling pretty run-down I will have to leave the room temporarily. It's so easy to beat yourself up and worry you're doing everything wrong and contributing to their trauma! But my new year's resolution was to say "fuck it" at least 3 times a day which is working so far.

We've had a few great night's sleep while wife is away, we'll see how he copes at the weekend but I think we'll be tiring him out a lot and working on letting him know that mum has to go away again but will be back again.

Yesterday night he went to sleep early (!!) but he wouldn't nap, so I took him for a walk instead but afterwards I wished we'd just cuddled on the sofa or something. Unfortunately I got woken up by the cat at 4.30am instead (!!)

As well I have a solution for the cat problem too. Shut them in somewhere! Ours stays in the laundry room as he is also prone to 4.30 alarm calls!

So glad things are better. Ear infections are common with molars coming in and of course the moment they lie down the pressure is worse and the pain can be terrible.

Our GP suggested propping up the head of the bed (placing something under the feet at that end) to help relieve some of the pressure on the ears. I remember it helped.