Awake for hours at night

One of my DD’s is now over 2.5yrs old and has never slept through the night for 3 days straight! Months ago I cut down their afternoon nap to one hour in hopes of DD sleeping at night (They sleep 7pm to-7:30 or 8am). Her sister has already dropped her naps most days and is happy with her rest periods--she is my good sleeper. Cutting down the nap didn’t really work and she is still up at night. At night she rarely cries, she’s just in there signing and talking (loudly) for one to three hours sometimes!
So last week I started giving her rest time too on the couch in hopes just a rest and not a nap would help…but she fell asleep anyway. So yesterday her daddy took her to the mall during nap time and for the first time she didn’t have a formal nap; by 7PM she was happy and ready for bed. However, last night like clockwork she was STILL up from 1:30am-3:30am (talking and signing the Wheels on the Bus!).
I’m so tired and ear plugs help but I want them to share a room one day and we are planning a vacation in the spring without the girls for the first time. Who would want to spend the night and endure sleepless nights and be with them all day! Why won’t this child sleep!

 

Hi there! I know what you're going through! My twins are the same-- one is a great sleeper, the other ones gets up almost every night around 2am to talk. He just talks and sings and then goes back to sleep. They have been sharing the same room since 7-8 months and my good sleeper never wakes up when his brother starts talking. I've just learned to ignore it--I shut off the monitor (I figure if something's really wrong they'll cry and I will hear that) and I mostly sleep through his late night comedy episodes. Every once in a while I wake up and hear him, but I go back to sleep right away (DH snores through the whole thing, of course). When I have had my mother-in-law or my mom stay for the night to take care of the kids I've just warned them and told them not to do anything. They usually report the next morning that yes, Sebastian was up talking but went right back to sleep. He only lasts 20-30 minutes, though, I imagine 2-3 hours is worse. Look at the bright side of this: at least your daughter is not up screaming! I think many mothers of twins out there are in that other situation, which could be much worse.... Anyway, good luck and hope she grows out of it soon!

 

My guess is, her little brain is just so over stimulated that it has to release that energy, by getting up in the middle of the night! :lol: Really I don't think there's anything you can do about it, I'm sure you do lots of quiet time before bedtime already. It's just her brains way of coping with all this "learning" it's doing during the day.

If she's happy, not fussing, and still in a good mood the next day, I think the best thing you can do is try to ignore it. Not very constructive I know. I would probably just ignore it, and I wouldn't hesitate to move the girls in together anyways. She may wake your other dd up for the first little while, but they quickly learn to sleep through each others noises. Mine can wake up screaming and the other one continues sleeping peacefully. We've even turned the light on and changed entire crib bedding from a stomach virus, and the other baby slept through it all! :lol:

As for the vaca, just inform whoever stays with them what's going on, reassure them it's normal, and that she'll go back to sleep on her own. It's much worse for you because you are up every single night hearing her, someone else won't be nearly as sleep deprived as you already are! :hug:

 

I agree with PPs that there is probably not much you can do about it. But I did want to add a thought regarding the vacation: Sometimes a change of place or people changes sleeping habits. We had to leave our LOs with the grandparents for 2 nights for a funeral for the first time recently and they slept much better than at home. I had been warning the grandmother that one of them is a very restless sleeper and will wake up crying several times a night. It never happened, they both STTN which is very rare at home.
GL and happy vacation planning.