Help me sort my toddler out before baby number 2 arrives!

[popsycal]

DS was 2 in August and goes to bed really well - kiss, door shut, goes to sleep - since controlled crying around xmas last year. The last few months howver, have been dreadful during the night. He has always been an 'ok' sleeper - never brilliant but never dreadful.

Anyway - we have tried everything to stop him waking during the night. LAst night it was every 2-3 hours - not for long, but long enough to wake us up. He still has a nap after lunch and needs it - can't last past 4pm if he doesn't have one. Have cut it right back to abotu 45 minutes though.

We have tried moving his bed time (currently around 7pm) and that doesnt change anything. He is also a really early morning waker (although 4:45 on saturday morning was an all time record - and typically, DH was away!)

We often just ignore him in the night, and for a while on a morning.....but it stil wakes us up!
Baby is due early MArch - HELP!!!

Hi - does your ds sleep in a bed or a cot? I only ask because my ds was always a very difficult sleeper but has been fine since we moved him into a bed (at 26 months).

P -- enid recently posted some statistic about 2yr olds sleeping less well well than 18mthers and 3-yr-olds. i gather it's quite common, often to do with moving into bed, fear of dark, imagination takeoff etc.
dd was always a great sleeper until around 2. anyway, one thing that really helped her/us was working out that suddenly she had become scared of dark. could this apply in your ds's case? a nightlight had a good, and almost instant, effect.
also some other threads have mentioned star charts, and, in advance at bedtime, discussing 'coping strategies' for getting back to sleep on own (ie, have sip of water, roll over, thumb in, whatever). this also worked for us.

He actually loves the dark and demands his night light be off! he is still in a cot and i was wondering whether this is the problem as he is a big lad for his age.....the only issue is his roo is tiny and getting a bed would probably involve a whole scale clear out of the spare bedroom and re-decorate to fit a bed in......hmmmm
It needs to be done soon though

I also think he might be cold. He has always had a gro-bag which he loves and is dressed appropriately according to insructions....but then you hear of toddlers in pyjamas and winter duvets.....when do the cot death recommendations end?

oh and he has a dummy......and cant find it in the night by himself.....

oh and he has a dummy......and cant find it in the night by himself.....

I had the same trouble and am happy to tell you that DS 9who was 2.5 when DD arrived) was fully "cured" in time for her arrival.

The main thing that helped was putting him in his big bed. Then we put a stairgate across the doorway as he was getting out a lot in the night. He knows that he can read/play in his room if he wakes, but is not allowed out of his room till morning.

We got one of those Lindam nightlights which fade out slowly, and which he can turn on easily (and safely) if he wants to.

We had a few nights of leaving him to cry when he woke up - we'd go up after a few mins to check he was OK, and then tell him it was nighttime, time for sleep ,etc, and leave again. he did cry for a long time but it was only a few nights.

You MUST lose the dummy, or you will be up and down 15 times a night once your new baby arrives. Just tell your toddler the dummies are only for babies, and get rid of them all cold turkey. That's what we did and I promise you it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected.

Now DS sleeps really well, and DD (7 months) is horrendous - even worse than DS was as a baby. At least I've been broken in already!

Oh PS re the grobag, we found DS kicked his duvet off and was then too cold, so I got this little gizmo from Lakeland which pins the duvet on the bed - he can still kick it off him if he wants to, but can easily drag it back over later.

We had the same problem with our dd and her dummy and not being able to find it in the night by herself We decided that the dummy had to go at 2.7 and ended up doing it totally cold turkey. We told her that only babies had dummies and she was a big girl now. We also told her that her dummy was bad for her teeth so he was going to go away as he wanted her to have nice teeth! We had one night of moaning and crying for a couple of house after bed time and then it was fine - I was expecting it all to be far worse. I think the thing was that she was old enough to understand what we were talking about. She now tells me ocasinally that her diddy (dummy) has gone on holiday!!! Good Luck

this always happens to me - post n Mn and the problem sorts itself out.

Last night we put a cot duvet on him - which we bought to match his room when a baby but have never used.

He woke twice as he kicked it off.....BUT SLEPT TIL 7:20!!!!!!!!

Off to order and bed and real duvet today

popsycal,

dd still has a cot duvet in her full size bed. She can snuggle into it and it is plenty big enough for now. Did the same with ds when he first moved into a bed. Perhaps keep new bedding as a treat for later on ?

I think i will - and instead will order some of those duvet clip thingies that someone mentioned somewhere

3 wakes in the night kicking off cot duvet...but woke at 6:45.....

hmmm
6 wakes in the night
awake at 6am....not so good

You've now got a problem with kicking off the duvet though haven't you? What I did with my DS at that age (and with the same problem) was put him in a summer weight sleeping bag with a lightweight duvet on top. Then his wriggling around was contained by the bag and the duvet stayed put.