this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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2 and a handful of months. Will not sleep. Takes hours and oftentimes we're not all in bed until after midnight. They're tall enough to operate all the doors in the apartment so even if I wanted to, I couldn't just leave them in their room. I just want to sleep a whole night
The only thing that works marginally for our three-year-old is getting up early in the morning. Like obnoxiously early. Our current wake up time is 5:00 AM.
I've known others with kiddos like that. I remember with our oldest, we started a routine pretty early. Our Pediatrician had told us It's good to turn off all the lights around a specific time to induce that "nighttime" feeling and get their bodies ready to sleep. Lights out around 7 to simulate nighttime, probably around 1yr-old we started using that as the queue to move them to their crib, which eventually morphed into 7:00 means stories in bed, and then lights out, and now it's a hole thing. Brush teeth, Wash face, stories with low light, then sleep. We have music on + a white/brown noise device. There was a time when I would sit in the room until they were fully asleep, but I was in there until like almost 10:00 or later, so I gradually introduced me leaving before then to get them comfortable. They're going to be 4 this year and most days they're so exhausted that they might not even get through all the stories they want to read, ha.
At some point, we'll have to start that routine building with our youngest. There was a time with our oldest where they were also taking forever to get to sleep, and I feel like having that routine really helped them. We also try and be vocal about bedtime approaching so they don't get sucked into an activity or so it doesn't blind side them. I also have an alarm on my phone that goes off at bedtime. Mostly a boon, but man if they don't hear that alarm go off they get very upset about it "not being bedtime yet". Gotta be ready to fudge the alarm in those moments.
But even with all that, we're still getting like no sleep, ha! Kid 2 still wakes up to eat in the middle of most nights. Kid 1 periodically wakes up in the middle of the night and hasn't mastered the skill of just going back to sleep, so they come and get one of us. It's a battle. I'll probably sleep when the kids move out of the house, whenever that is, maybe when they're 30 given the state of things.