To have had enough now?

[Popsalot]

Long story: my 4 year old DS was a terrible sleeper from birth. I had a traumatic birth with him and I had undiagnosed PTSD. I went months in his first year existing on 2-3 broken hours of sleep a night. He screamed every time he was put down.

In hindsight I should have co-slept, but instead we hired a sleep consultant. She advocated “gradual retreat” and when that failed to make any difference after 3 months, told us to do controlled crying and then cry it out. We did (to my eternal shame and horror) and the results have been catastrophic.

DS is a highly anxious and hyped-up child. He requires constant attention and reassurance. I have tried so hard to build his confidence but nothing works. After the cry it out failed at the age of 14 months, we put him into our bed, where he has stayed ever since. I hate it. I desperately want my personal space back but every time we try, he goes utterly berserk. There’s absolutely no reaching him when he’s in a state like that and he can’t calm himself down.

It’s poisoning my marriage and my relationship with him. AIBU to think that he’s 4 now and this is just enough? What can I do?

Sorry, I don't have any ideas, just sympathy as I'm in a similar situation with my DD. She hasn't slept in her own bed since we tried sleep training. I'm sick of sleeping in the same bed as her and never getting a good night's sleep. She's 3 and a half and I'm hoping that she will want her own space soon, but who knows.

We put our dd in her own room with a double bed. We stay with her until she falls asleep and then if she wakes we go and lay with her. She is told she can’t come into our bed anymore.

In 9 months we have gone from waking every 45 minutes to sleeping 11-13 hours straight.

However, we didn’t do the controlled crying etc and so she isn’t anxious. Just a terrible sleeper who doesn’t want to be alone. It is very likely this is the case with your child too, a terrible sleeper - not someone traumatised by controlled crying.

We’ve got a four year old that still isn’t sleeping too. I just wanted to agree that it’s shit! No advice but don’t be too hard on yourself, there’s no manual is there.

So posted a little too soon.

I just wanted to highlight that it is not necessarily going to be sleep training that has caused this in your son. So stop feeling guilty about that because it’s probably that guilt that is stopping you fully committing to changing the situation.

Also, your and his father should take it in turns to put him down. We started to do this about 5 months ago and its made a real difference.

Either me or DH lay with our DS in his bed until he has fallen asleep. This has worked really well as he now spends all night in his own bed. Is this something you could try? I would advise getting a single or double bed as I'm not sure a cot/cot bed would be big enough for you both to lay in comfortably.

Could you try sleeping in his bed with him for a while, or a mattress in his room, then gradually build up to leaving once he's asleep/sleepy? When you get to the 'leaving' stage, explain in advance that tonight you'll have to go for a little while while he's asleep, but you'll come back and will come right away if he needs you

Sympathies. I had the months (year) of no sleep with both mine, but thankfully both sleep well in their own rooms now (well, ds is still up 3x for bf, but that's a massive improvement!) Hope you can find a solution that works for you xx

Can you sleep on a mattress in his room for a while and then slowly move out?

Honestly, it won’t be that he is an anxious child now just because you let him ‘cry it out’ as a baby.
I’ve always co slept with one of mine. (I actually co slept with both and one just decided to go into her own room at 3 and never looked back). He’s 6 and still co sleeps, it’s just the type of child he is. He likes to feel secure and close to someone when he sleeps. It’s human nature and an evolutionary survival skill that’s just built in him.
You can try letting him fall asleep in your bed and then carrying him through to his own. It might give you 4 hours alone with your partner, or 15 mins. We get both. It won’t be forever.
You can also try a mattress on your floor

I agree with PP. Your child is naturally anxious you didn't cause it by sleep training. Have you tried getting his own bed and sleeping there with him then leaving and going to your bed once he's asleep? Maybe in the night he can come to find you but he's not allowed to actually get into bed with you? It might also be helpful to work on his anxiety with a professional.

Could you get a cot, take one side off and push it up to your bed? Then he has his own space but is within reach of you?

That sounds so hard! At 4, it probably is time for him to have his own bed, but it will just take longer to get there. How does he get to sleep at the moment? Do you need to lie with him? Does he sleep through the night? What have you tried so far too try and wean him off co-sleeping?

At this age it isn’t sleep training that is making him go berserk. Have you spoken to a GP? There are many conditions that manifest themselves through poor sleep.

You poor things. We didn’t sleep train or co-sleep exactly but DS woke up pretty much every night for the first three years and from about 2 just came and got into bed with us.

We were getting exhausted with musical beds so got a double in DS’s room. Like PP we used to lay down with him until he’d drifted off. If he woke in the night we’d take him back to settle him.

We’ve progressed now to sitting next to him holding his hand. Now we don’t hold hands.

He has a CD player to listen to music or an audio book as he drifts off. We leave when he’s asleep.

I’d try a few of those things.

My son was always a tricky sleeper so please don’t be hard on yourself, some children just are. You must’ve been desperate. It’s very hard functioning on little and broken sleep.

Op I could have written your opening post word for word apart from sleep trainer, our hv told us quite bluntly that she couldn't help.

We kept a sleep diary, I was up to him 16 times in one night....this was my night...EVERY NIGHT.

I was so tired constantly, I felt dizzy, physically sick, couldn't concentrate, most of the time had double vision, I was bone drenched utterly utterly exhausted.

Traumatic birth, pnd, and zero sleep has poisoned my relationship with him..my child.

He slept his first block of 6 hours when he started school, aged 5. I thought he was dead, I ran into his room thinking he had died!
Over time we got a few more nights of him sleeping longer thank God.

I accepted (rightly or wrongly) that this was just the way it was. I took each night as it came, handed over to dh the moment he walked in the door, went to bed (when he wasn't screaming and creating because he wanted just me) .
He was/is a very very challenging child. Behaviour was difficult, I couldn't leave him in a room on his own, he was destructive, overly active, a climber, a bolter, an escape artist. Dismantled my stair gates, regularly got out of car seats/high chairs/pram straps. Needed 100% attention constantly.

He now sleeps, he is a teenager.

Of course there was NO way on God's green earth we could consider another child and put ourselves through that again, hence the huge gap between my kids.

They are like night & dat thank fuck, child number 2 is so much easier.

DS1 has obstructive sleep apnoea, had tonsils out at 2.8yo, so the repeated stopping of his breathing would cause him to wake sometimes up to 30x a night, always with a lot of screaming. The consultant told us after surgery he’d be sleeping through with no issues. He’s 6 and has managed to sleep through maybe 5/6 times since then. He just hates being on his own and is anxious about being alone. He is better in that he’s not screaming the house down and will go to sleep at bedtime without issue now, but when he does wake in the night (every night) he gets in our bed. We do take him back to his room now, and we got a bed with a pull out single underneath so we often just go to sleep on that with him in his own bed, because if we leave him he will be up again within the hour.

I think at 4 a bit of tough love is needed. He's old enough to understand the transition. Obviously if he's slept in your bed for all this time then I can see why it's difficult.. perhaps decorate his room, let him pick everything, tell him that now he's 4, it's time to be a big boy and have a big boy room. Let him pick new bedding, get him excited. When it comes down to actually sleeping in there he will probably become difficult but that's where the tough love is. If you've made the decision that he is to sleep in his own bed then you need to stick with it and follow it through.