any advice for non sleeping 6month old and 2andaquarter year old....?

[galina]

hi there

6 month old has never been very good at sleeping - catnaps 3 times a day for 20mins each time, still feeds 3-4 times in the night, often up for 2 hours in the night singing loudly, but other than that happy and healthy and yummy!

2 year old has been a champion sleeper for past year, but in past week has started getting very insecure at bedtime and will also wake up in the night calling for us. We go in every 10-15mins to reassure him, but it takes anywhere between 1-4 hours for him to go back to sleep. He's generally a happy and energetic toddler, but is going through a very clingy phase that I guess will pass - any ideas when?

Trouble is they are both waking eachother up in the night also (baby in with us, toddler in his room)

Any advice on how we can help baby to start to sleep longer between feeds, but without her noise waking our son up? And how we can help toddler to get back on track without waking baby up?

All very bleary eyed in our house.... and it's really starting to take its toll .... wanted to make a special valentines meal tonight but at the moment I feel like going to bed at 7pm!

Not a lot of sleep going on for you! Is your 2 year old waking because of nightmares? My toddler started at the same time ish when his imagination became much more vivid and his sleep consequently disrupted. I knew it was because of his dreams because he'd start to discuss what he'd seen in his sleep the mext morning. And I had a similar problem in that his night waking would disrupt ds2 (4 months) and cause him to wake even more frequently than normal. He will still wake 4 or 5 times a night but I've had to get more relaxed about letting him make a noise when he does wake because I figure that they'll have to learn to sleep through each other's noises eventually.

My toddler settled a bit more easily when I took him to buy his own night light which he switches on before bedtime and has on all night. It seems to reassure him when he wakes.

As for your 6 month old, I'm glad I'm not the only one spending long hours blowing raspberries and trying to persuade him to go back to sleep in the early hours! I just tell myself it will get better eventually - ds1 slept more soundly when he was on the move and that's not far off now. Maybe your baby is ready for food, having reached the magic 6 months mark?

Interestingly enough, ds woke this morning talking about 'scary cows in the bed' so you are probably right about bad dreams starting. He is now scared of his bed though so we will have to think of some ways to help him overcome this - think we will go and choose a nightlight this weekend - thanks for the tip.

DD has just started on solids this past week and I am gradually trying to fill her up more in the day in the hope that she will cut down on night feeds, although I suspect she feeds for comfort rather than hunger at night... did manage to not have a 2 hour waking party with her last night though!

Looking forward to getting a good nights sleep one day.....hopefully..... (although found the energy somehow to have a nice valentines day meal last night)

well - ds woke up again screaming at 4.30am last night and after a few times of us reassuring him and patting him, still didn't settle - until I wrapped him in my pyjama top, asked him to look after it until morning, and lo and behold he slept through til 7.30!
Amazing what works eh?!