toddler insomnia?

[mummylonglegs]

I wonder if anyone else has experienced this. My dd, 2.3, has been a pretty good sleeper since birth apart from a glitch around 18 months which included bedtime refusals etc. and we got over. But she's lately developed this weird insomnia in the early hours of the morning, around 2-3ish typically but it was 1.30 last night. It's not every night, last night was the 4th time it's happened this month, mostly she's still sleeping right through the night. When it does happen I hear her shuffling round and sighing and yawning, then after 10 mins or so she calls for me so I pop in, make sure everything's ok, give her a kiss, she says goodnight perfectly happy and off I go. Then 15 mins later she calls me again and says she can't sleep. I try to ask why but she's not great with why questions just yet, so I settle her down again and off I go. This goes on for up to 2.5 hours. She doesn't cry. She's just wide awake. I can relate to it in that it happens to me sometimes when I'm very stressed about something. I've tried cutting down on her daytime sleep but this just makes her over-tired at bedtime (I think she really needs a nap still) and wakes up very early in the morning. She's not hot or cold and doesn't seem unwell.

It's weird. Familiar anyone?

That's what I was thinking halcat. There's no real point in the miraculous 'sleeping through' moment given that at any time they might just stop sleeping through for a reason you can't fathom!

Dd woke at 4.45am this morning and seemed really awake so I just said 'it's night time, go back to sleep'. She said 'I'll just have a little story?' to which I said 'NO!!!!!' and then I just lay her next to me and didn't chat back to her when she talked. She sighed and went back to sleep within minutes. To be honest I don't mind lying with her at all so long as she doesn't do that being awake for 2 hours stint.

I don't think she's cold by the way as someone mentioned. She goes to bed in a long sleeved vest, fleecy all-in-one pyjamas and a sleeping bag. She never seems cold. I do think she may be uncomfortable in some way though as it's not like her to be SO wakeful in the middle of the night.

When my little one was about 9 months I told my health visitor that he only slept from around 10pm to 6am. She said it was fantastic what was I complaining about? 8 hours is great for a baby that age (he was rubbish before that point).I expalined that I had a friend who's baby was three weeks older and she slept from 7am to 7pm. My health visitor said she was lying as no child sleeps through uninterrupted until at least 18 months. So there you go. And as it happens, both our kids are now 2yrs and she has now said her little one was never a good sleeper and has real problems. So a) never listen to parents who say their babies sleep for 39 hours a day as they are probably fibbing or missing out some important facts like they are awak for two hours every night. I agree there is no magical date, my little one sleeps well (8.30pm to 7.30am) but I will check on him once in the night as he tends to throw the covers off and last night he was wide awake from 4am to 5.45am. There is no real pattern just that on balance he currently sleeps well but that could so easily change and I guess that's how toddlers are.....human beings. I don't sleep brilliantly every night so why do we expect our kids to be robots?

Umm ... the weird thing for me, sb, is that dd DID sleep a 12-hour night straight through between the ages of about 2 months and 15 months when she then cut it down to 11 hours. Apart from times of illness etc. she just NEVER woke at night even during extreme firework displays right outside her window in the park. And I'm not lying, honestly. I also have a friend who's dd sleeps 13-14 hours straight through and has done since about 3 months old. I've stayed at her house so I know it's true! So dd used to sleep like a little log. After 15 months it started to get more erratic and now it's all over the place. Last night she slept 7.30-7am. The night before she slept 8.30-4.45 then again with me until about 7.30. I think I'm just finding the erraticness of it at present rather hard to fathom.

Hi mummylonglegs. I think the thing is that they just don't stay the same all the time. She will probably go back to how she was at some point soon but the truth of the matter is thaot it is unusual for babies to sleep for long totally uninterrupted. Maybe she's been doing a huge amount of growing and now she's not doing as much?