More sleep please!!!!

[Gwynie]

Ds was a fantatstic natural sleeper from 7 weeks old.

Now he is 17 mths and he goes down screaming at 8pm and wakes up crying at 3.30am for the last few weeks or so. He is fine when we go in there and reassure him, but as soon as we close his bedroom door he starts screaming and crying again.

Last night, he did this and we tried to resettle him for about 2.5 hours at the end of which we were so exhauseted that we put him in our bed (a habit which we hoped we would use very, very little, but have used in incresing amounts in the last few weeks).

I was hoping that others had been through a similar situation and would be able to advise what to do.

We have tried control crying (although maybe we are not as strict as we should be) and co-sleeping, but as mentioned earlier, we are not really happy with this, although it works.

Is it night-terrors? We do not think he's scared of the dark as once he is in our bed with the lights out, he goes to sleep more or less straight away.

Sorry to waffle (probably fatigue) but any info would be great.

Tx

Gwynie I had a similar situation but my ds was a bit older, about 25 months. I still don't know what caused it but my belief is that he either developed some sort of fear about his bedroom, or was experiencing bad dreams. The couple of times that he woke up around 2.00 or 3.00 in the morning, I had to resort to giving him a dummy because nothing else would placate him (he only ever had his dummy for daytime naps, no other time). Like your ds, he also started screaming when I put him to bed at night.

Initially I gave ds a little torch to take to bed with him in case he was scared of the dark, but how I actually overcame it was to spend more time with ds in his bedroom at night. When bedtime came I would put him in his cot with some of his toys, pull up a chair next to him, and spend about half an hour looking at books with him. I thought if I could make his bed seem like a more 'pleasant' place, then I would have less trouble getting him to go to sleep. Before I turned the light off I would get him to say goodnight to his toys & things around the room, so that he was familiar with everything that was in there. This worked really well, and the problem went away in a very short time. He hasn't done it for months now so all I can put it down to is some sort of phase or fear that he was going through. Hope this helps a bit.

Tx Holly2, excellent idea.

We usually read him bed time stories in our room and then transfer him to his room.

Shall start to read to him in his bedroom, with him in the cot.

We used to get this with DS (16 months) - who like yours slept well when he was younger, but got out of the habit as time went on. We seem to have largely overcome it by a combination of things.

1: moving him to a bed rather than a cot, as he hated being "caged in" and would scream, and often make himself sick, whenever we put him in the cot, and then wake and need resettling 4 or 5 times a night

2: giving him a longer calming down period - music box playing, and his last milk at night in bed, in the dark, and with one of us sitting with him

3: giving him a duvet and a fleece sleeper rather than just the pyjamas and sleeping bag he had before. Although according to the temperature guides he should have been warm enough, and he never felt cold, he obviously just like to be warm at night, and used to prefer snuggling under mummy and daddys duvet to having nothing over him - like your ds he'd settle to sleep immediately if we brought him into our bed.

He's now usually sleeping through for 10 hours, which is a huge improvement. Admittedly we still need to get him to go to sleep on his own, and not to need a bottle to do it - but we are definately making progress.

We used to get this with DS (16 months) - who like yours slept well when he was younger, but got out of the habit as time went on. We seem to have largely overcome it by a combination of things.

1: moving him to a bed rather than a cot, as he hated being "caged in" and would scream, and often make himself sick, whenever we put him in the cot, and then wake and need resettling 4 or 5 times a night

2: giving him a longer calming down period - music box playing, and his last milk at night in bed, in the dark, and with one of us sitting with him

3: giving him a duvet and a fleece sleeper rather than just the pyjamas and sleeping bag he had before. Although according to the temperature guides he should have been warm enough, and he never felt cold, he obviously just like to be warm at night, and used to prefer snuggling under mummy and daddys duvet to having nothing over him - like your ds he'd settle to sleep immediately if we brought him into our bed.

He's now usually sleeping through for 10 hours, which is a huge improvement. Admittedly we still need to get him to go to sleep on his own, and not to need a bottle to do it - but we are definately making progress.