Is it too late for sleep consultant at age 4 and 6?

[Mamabearwhere]

To cut a very long story short I’m blessed with two wonderful girls who have shit sleep. My older one particularly bad since the day she was born and my younger one has in the past 6 months driven me crazy with night wakings.

I am at witts end. I have anxiety falling asleep because of fear of knowing I’m going to be called for any minute.

They come into our bed, then argue about who sleeps next to me, complain it’s too dark, too hot, too cold etc

I cannot stand my kids in bed with me. I wish I loved having my kids snuggle up to me but I need my own space when I’m sleeping.

I’m thinking of getting a sleep consultant but is it too late, are they too old?

I'd suggest trying here for trouble shooting here first tbh. There's no magic solution ... The key thing a sleep consultant will do is hold you to account for implementing the solutions, which we can't do here. And if you pay for it, you may be more invested in trying to get through the temporary pain of getting this sorted.

Tell us more.

Where are their rooms? What's your DH doing in all this? Basic sleep hygiene checks - blackout blinds, no screens before bed, calming wind down routine, what does that look like? Night light or not? Success factors - is there any pattern of good nights Vs bad ones (can be weather, school going well or badly, anything!)... Etc. What are the dynamics of the oldest Vs younger ones, does one wake the other? Is it lack of getting them to sleep or do they go down then wake up? What bedtimes and wake up times do they have & does it change? Etc etc

Get this moved to the specialist forum op:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sleep

@LoftyLucy thank you! How do I get this moved to the sleep forum?

To answer your questions, they’ve always shared a room and it’s on the same floor as ours. When one wakes up calling for us Dh or I will go in and try to settle them back into their bed but usually we tend to rush them out into our room in fear of waking the other one up. It’s the worst when they’re both awake, crying and whining. We tend to play musical beds a lot where dh will take my older one to the spare room while I sleep with younger one in our bed because 4 of in bed is not great and no one sleeps well.

I genuinely feel like my older dd is not able to stay in her room, she’s petrified alone (even though she’s with her sister) and I can tell because of the way she storms into my room in complete panic and fear saying she’s scared. Doesn’t ever say what she’s scared of just that she’s scared to be alone or scared of the dark.

My younger daughter is not as petrified but I do feel like she’s picked up a lot of habits and language from her older sister such as saying she’s scared. I bribed her with saying sleep fairy will come if she stays in her bed all night long and it worked and she stayed in her bed all night long last night. She’s able to self soothe herself back when she wants. Whereas my older one CANNOT and HAS NEVER self soothed. Impossible. She just cannot do it. She cannot be awake in middle of night without one of us there.

I’ve always tried to keep a very healthy and structured bedtime. Same routine, bath/shower 6:30, book 6:50, bed 7pm. They don’t have screen time weekdays so after school is downtime, playing, reading books, playing in garden, then dinner and bath. I’ve tried in the past to do bedtime yoga, I’ve tried the Calm app.

The only time we had success was in Jan when I tried putting on a sleepy bedtime story from the calm app after I did bedtime cuddles and book and would say goodnight, put on a story for them on my phone to listen to and I left the room. They successfully fell asleep without me being by their side.

I cannot remember at which point it all went downhill, I think once Covid happened and they started being clingy again and wanting me to sit with them.

I keep thinking I cannot be sitting by their beds while they fall asleep. I’ve done it for 6 years and I’ve had enough.

I’m in such a mess I don’t know even where to start. Do I give them their own room? (Older dd has been asking for it but younger one isn’t too keen on being alone)

Do I go back to the bedtime sleeping stories?