How long does it take for a sensitive sleeper

My son:
- Wakes up several times a night - 1-2 times on a good night, 5-6 times on a bad night
- If he gets off track from a schedule that's working for him, it takes a month to find a way to get him back on track
- If he skips a nap (which we've gone back and forth with giving them up and trying my hardest to bring them back in) he's "trained" to not want to take them anymore after one time
- If he skips a nap and or goes to bed late because of something out of the ordinary we had planned and couldn't be helped, he will wake up screaming 5-6 times a night making irrational demands about wanting books in his bed, wanting me to pick them out, freaking out when it's not the "right" book
- If you try to put him to bed earlier to make up for it, he just wakes up earlier, and you have the same problem the next day - refusing a nap and then waking up at night.

He is now on a completely different "schedule" than my daughter, but luckily she adapts to anything. I put him to bed 1-2 hours earlier than her because she took a nap that day, and I'll just leave her light on and let her read. She'll stay in bed quietly reading until I come in to turn her light off. I'm kicking myself because the reason I changed around their schedule in the first place was because my daughter was taking a long and late nap and staying up til 11 reading. My son took a shorter nap and fell asleep earlier. I should have just left it alone. Now I can't get him back to a schedule where he isn't overtired and waking up all night and refusing naps. I'm so fed up. I'm ready to either a) put his crib back together with his crib tent and let him scream it out all night every night and all during nap time. b) completely give up and do whatever the h*ell he wants - you want to sleep in my bed? fine. you want me sleep on your floor? you want me to pick out exactly 7 books that feel like the right shape and size to you, and lay them exactly where you want in your bed? you want me to wake up daddy so you can talk to him? fine fine fine. I'm so tired of the fighting over everything ever single night. I'll just have to come to terms that I won't get to sleep anymore. So I want to know, HOW FREAKING LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR SOMEONE WHO IS SO FREAKING SENSITIVE TO SLEEP PROBLEMS GROW OUT OF IT??????

 

I wish I knew. I was up a couple times last night with my sensitive sleeper and I'm so tired today I can't think straight. :hug:

 

I read "Raising your spirited child" recently. Finally felt like I was not just insane.


I don't think they ever truly outgrow it. Unfortunately. They just start coping with it better as they get older.

 

I was hoping someone would say 3, so I only had a couple months to go! Unfortunately I'm afraid it's 3 more years...

I've heard good things about that book. I'm going to see if the library has it.

Our time line to go back in for our last two embryos is late Spring/early Summer. I hate to admit that I'm not really on board because I still don't know what it's like to have your kids consistently sleep through the night. I can't do this again with one (or two!) more babies if my son is still waking up 5 times a night.

 

Denise. I totally understand your son's behavior. Mine are like him. (I've mentioned that before when you posted something..)
Anyway, mine have been really good about not waking up at night UNTIL they potty trained. Now they get up once per night to pee but they wait for me to go and get them.

As far as the "get me that book" "get me this and that". I go thru that EVERY SINGLE NIGHT and always have. And to make it worse, one kid is upstairs and one is down AND... Dh is gone EVERY NIGHT so I do it alone! So I'm up and down up and down up and down. It is RIDICULOUS but if I don't appease him/him at least 3 times by getting this and that, then he won't sleep! It's soooo annoying!

I say "Okay, mommy is going to get you ONE book and ONE toy and then I'm not coming in anymore." And it usually works, but that's ONLY after going in there several times before I do the "final call." UGH.

It's impossible. There is no good solution to this. Just time.

And that nap/no nap predicament does not sound fun.

Also, I totally get you not wanting to get pregnant w/o them STTN. OMG am I TIRED!

 

We've had phases of that with a few of ours. Aaron in particular seemed to always wake up during the night even after sleep training as a baby. I got to the point that he was left to deal with his issues without my help. I could never appease him enough to go to sleep so I left him to his own devices. Now at 6 he still wakes up during the night but is quiet. By the time we moved him to a bed at 3, he only had random nights of waking us, he had learned we weren't going to do anything and the more he freaked, the LESS attention he got. I say put a doorknob cover on, clear the room of everything but necessities and let him figure it out. Five kids later, I've learned that teaching our kids to sleep doesn't mean to sleep straight through (who sleeps straight through every night?) but to manage the night without help from mom or dad.

 

I like this. We've had to "sleep train" (i.e. CIO) I'd say every few weeks to every month since he was 8 months old. Then I'd get a good month stretch or so out of him and it would be amazing for all of us to sleep through the night. You quickly forget how miserable it is when he doesn't. I've gotten out of the CIO thing once we potty trained and he'd usually get up 1-2 times a night to go to the bathroom. I know 1, maybe even 2 of those times wasn't always valid - it was just an excuse to get up. But I wasn't going to fight about it since he'd usually go right back to sleep. Then those will escalate into additional wakings "I have a stuffy nose", "I want to be tucked in", and it starts getting out of hand and we need to start thinking about sleep training again. It's just so hard when he's not in a crib. I still threaten to close and lock his door, and I do do it (even though he screams his head off like crazy and rattles the door handle the entire time, and his room is inches from his sister's...but I do it and it's not nearly as effective as being in his crib.) Probably because the next night I do get up all over again for the potty thing, needing to be tucked in, etc until I can't handle it anymore.

But this new problem since our schedule is not working for him, I can tell he's truly overtired because his wake-ups usually involve him crying and being very upset, incoherent, or making unrealistic and crazy demands in the middle of the night (why would you think I'd read you a story at 3 in the morning??). I don't know if he's with it enough to learn through sleep training that it has to stop. I feel like I need to fix his schedule first. But I just don't know how, because he won't let me! Today he was locked in his room and screamed during his entire naptime. So that worked well. I put him to bed at 8:30 (woke up at 9 this morning, after waking 3-4 times last night). I'm keeping my fingers crossed for one good night to work forward from.

Great, I hear a little voice calling me right now. I pray it's not him, but I suspect it is...

ETA: It was my little Allison asking me to turn her light out because she was done reading (she took a 2 hour nap, so she got to stay up and read in bed). At least I have one angel sleeper, or I don't know what I'd do!

 

Oh yeah, I remember! It seems like I'm always posting about my son! Luckily he is much better during the day and doesn't throw the same crazy, stubborn tantrums that used to drive me insane - nearly as often now. If my days were as bad as my nights I think I'd be searching the employment ads for myself and looking for full time child care!