3 year old split nights

[teaandkittehs]

We've had a problem with split nights coming and going since she was 17 months old. She's now 3 years 1 months. Sometimes there were no split nights for two months, sometimes none for a week, sometimes up to 4 within a week. No consistency at all, and she's now had at least 10 consecutive split nights in a row, awake for 2 - 3 hours in the night, talking or singing to herself but also asking to use the potty (sometimes not doing a wee at all) or asking for a nappy change (definitely can't be left without nappy at night yet, is wet every night still although potty trained in the day). We used to be able to improve the split nights by shortening naps, but she stopped napping 6 months ago. I think we are just really unlucky and that developmental phases hit her hard and result in split nights, but my gawd is it killing us. She was having them intermittently until about a month ago when she suddenly started sleeping for longer than usual, hiding had been doing 10.5 hours but was suddenly doing in excess of 12 hours and sleeping through the night again which was AMAZING, then all of a sudden they became split nights instead. They are affecting her badly as we are having to wake her for nursery as she's been awake so long at night that she's sleeping in. I can't get back to sleep after her split nights so I'm sometimes having to go to work or parent her having been up since 1.30am so this is really starting to affect my mental health. When i Google 3 year old split nights i get a lot of hits, when i Google 4 year old split nights I get way less hits. Please someone tell me this will go away with time! We've not got any more day sleep to cut down as there is no nap so we are a bit stuck. . . .

I should probably add that she started long days in nursery 3 weeks ago. She's gone from 3 days of 3 hours there, to 3 days of 6 hours there. She's also since turning 3 in December started throwing more tantrums and her speech is rapidly growing and improving (she was a bit speech delayed). She was having split nights before she started doing longer days at nursery so they are not new, but such a long run of them in a row is new! I'm so exhausted. . . .

Often split nights are the result of trying for too much sleep in 24 hours. What bedtime and waking up time are you aiming for? If she's a bit variable in her sleep needs, it might be easiest to say, have bedtime at 7.30, then if it's a 10.5 hours of sleep day, accept a 6am start, but if she needs a bit more and gets up at 6.30 or 7am, that's okay. Or 8pm bed, waking between 6.30-7.30am, or similar.

My two are similar, and that's roughly what we do – I do find I have to watch that a run of late wakes doesn't start rotating everything, later bedtimes and me routinely having to wake a grumpy child because I've got to get to work.

She was until a month ago usually doing about 10 - 10.5 hours sleeping through the night, but then suddenly started doing 12 hours a night. This was leading her to wake up too late to be ready for nursery so we moved her bedtime back from 8 to 7, but after a week of that allowing for her to sleep longer, the split nights started again. The main problem for us at present is that she's struggling with the transition to longer days at nursery, we've had to agree to pick her up at 1.30 for a while instead of 3pm as she has been having meltdowns after lunchtime, so we don't want to sleep deprive her any more until she is more settled into the longer days. Then I think the best thing to do night be to move back towards a later bedtime and a consistent wake up time. I think because she was sleeping for longer, probably as a result of developmental stuff, we had to introduce an earlier bedtime. We presumed that once she no longer needed to sleep for that long, we would just end up getting 5am starts and would gradually have pushed her bedtime later again to ensure at least 8 - 6am sleep. But yes we might now be caught in a revolting door of late wake ups that feed the problem. But with her being such a mess about her longer days we feel a bit stuck about moving her bedtime later now as the split nights will likely take a couple of weeks to resolve, if the resolve at all, and we would then be sending a sleep deprived child into a setting that she is already getting upset about! So I guess we wait to see if nursery settles a bit and then move her bedtime later. But equally it seems that some kids are just prone to split nights and nothing fixes it. I havoc colleague with an 11 year old who apparently still has them. It's a terrifying thought. She said as he got older he learned to manage them without her being needed, but my dear little lady is only 3 so certainly can't work things out for herself yet. I suffer insomnia in any case, very bad diagnosed chronic insomnia, so having this add to my sleep deprivation is really messing me up. . . .

We moved her bedtime earlier because putting her to bed at 8 was leaving to her sleeping through 50% of the time BUT when she started sleeping much longer she was sometimes still fast asleep at 8 am and she needs longer than an hour to be ready for nursery as she takes a while with breakfast and convincing her to get dressed etc. She's getting about 10.5 hours on her split nights.