Monday, June 6, 2011

Who Needs Sleep?


Apparently not Rory.  We are on day 2 of “I need less sleep than anyone else in the family.”  I used to only be able to listen to other parents sigh warily when they talked about their children and their nighttime struggles.  This was a club I wanted nothing to do with and was happy to be excluded.  

Now, it seems, my darling little boy thinks I need to be more socially involved because he has unwillingly signed me up for the dreaded club.  For roughly the last 4 months Rory has been getting up in the middle of the night.  It was hit or miss for awhile, but now it’s gotten to be not only a nightly event, but also happening multiple times a night.  The most frustrating thing about these late night wake up calls is that Rory doesn’t need anything.  He’s 2 ½ years old so the late night feedings have been over for nearly 2 years.  In fact, all I have to do is walk him back to his room and put him back in bed.  I don’t talk to him, cuddle him or do anything special to get him back to sleep.  He does that on his own sometime after I leave.

Last night Rory’s first wake up was at 12:30am.  The second, 1:40am.  The third through about 100 was during the 3:00 hour.  I finally put up a gate so he couldn’t get out of his room, which he knocked down, waking up Kamryn.  Can you imagine my delight when I heard her yell “Mommy!”  Luckily, she loves to sleep and all it took was me telling her that Rory was being naughty and she went right back to bed.
Just when I thought all was well and Rory would sleep until 9:00am, I heard him yelling “Mommy, OUT!” at 5:45am.  I still had the gate up so I told him he needed to go back to bed and sleep for a little while.  Amazingly, he said, “Okay.” And went back to his bed and laid down.  I went back to bed too and 5 minutes later, I hear him crying.  I told him he couldn’t get out of bed, so he didn’t.  Instead, he just laid there and wailed. 

I always prided myself on my sleeping kids.  We were never interested in co-sleeping.  I have yet to hear of a successful co-sleeping story in which the child was transitioned into their own bed at a reasonable age without incident.  I did use the cry-it-out method with Kamryn, which some think is cruel.  And it sucked…for me.  I paced back and forth for 45 minutes while she screamed from her crib.  But, just like they said in all the literature, the next night was 20 min, and then 5 and then a peaceful sleeping baby.  And if you ask Kamryn how traumatized she is from that, she’ll ask you what “traumatized” means.  Rory somehow learned how to sleep through the night on his own and now, seems to have forgotten.

I’m not looking forward to sleep training a 2 year old, but rest assured, (pun intended) the boy will sleep.  One thing I do not waiver on is sleep.  My bed is not your bed and neither of our wake up times should be before 7:00am.

Or course I'm posting a picture of him in his sister's pink sweatshirt.  That's payback for waking me up

2 comments:

  1. So, as you know, we parent so much alike. I battled Lily for a long time in the 2's but I never gave up. It worked, she rarely wakes us anymore. I also taught her at about 3 how to recognize a 7 on a digital clock, so I tell her not to get up until she sees that 7. At 3 1/2, it's working pretty well. There are times when she just doesn't care if she gets in trouble and wakes me anyway, but I'm sleeping more. The second child is just trouble.

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  2. My hope is that my persistence will pay off. Rory slept all night last night, but was up at 6:00. I had some people suggested doing the clock thing with him and all I thought was "Yeah, that's not going to work. For one, he is 2 and when people ask him how old he is, he will tell them either 3 or 6." Hopefully by the time he's 3, he will understand too.

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