Long long ago and then more recently, Sydney stopped sleeping through the night. When Sydney was a baby, we had some difficulty getting her to sleep all night. From age 1-2, she would wake up having lost her pacifier and would go back to sleep most of the time if you quickly found it and gave it back to her.
Around November or so, something new happened. Sydney started not wanting to go to sleep alone at night and not wanting to go back to sleep alone if she woke up. In her mind, we were supposed to sit in the rocking chair all night watching her sleep or lay on the floor next to her bed while she slept. If we were there, everything was fine. If not, she would frequently wake up and start screaming. Getting her to bed also go harder because she would let us rock her to sleep and then wake up immediately when we put her in bed.
Getting Sydney back to sleep in the middle of the night was an even bigger challenge. Rocking usually didn’t do it. If she did fall asleep it wasn’t soundly enough to move her to her bed. If we laid on the floor, the squeaking of the floor during our exit would wake her up. Putting her in bed with us usually worked but that wasn’t a habit we really wanted to get into. Plus, Sydney has a habit of turning horizontally, pressing her head against one of us and her feet against the other. We’re guaranteed to get kicked. Meghan has also tried letting her play for an hour or so but that doesn’t work well if you have to go to work the next day.
Over Christmas while we were at my parents’ house, Sydney ended up in bed with us each night sometime between 12 and 2. As a side story, one of those nights, she was laying between us with each of us turned on a side with our backs toward her. The covers had become a tent suspended several inches above her and she woke Meghan up to ask for help getting the covers down. In spite of the annoyance of having her in bed with us, I found that somewhat cute.
Thinking that much of the sleeping problem was simply being away from us, we instituted a “play by yourself in your room” time once a day. We play 10-15 minutes of music on her MP3 player ending in the happy song (If you’re happy and you know it…). She has to play by herself with the door closed until she hears the happy song. We also ceased rocking her until she was completely asleep and started moving her to the bed when she got groggy, putting on the music, and promising her that if she was still awake when the happy song came on, we would come back in. To our amazement this alone time didn’t bother her a bit. Bed time has involved some crying but the assurance that we’re coming back if she doesn’t go to sleep has pacified her most nights. We haven’t had to go back in very many times.
For a couple days, we thought we were doing well. Then, Thursday the 6th we had a really bad night. Sydney was up from roughly 1:30 to 4:30. Meghan tried everything including putting her in our bed. Sydney just couldn’t fall asleep or lay still without kicking or climbing all over us. The weekend that followed was much better and we were good until Wednesday the 12th. That was the worst night yet with Sydney waking up at 11pm and not going back to sleep until sometime around 4am.
As another amusing side story, on Sunday night she took her Elmo doll to bed. It talks when you squeeze its hand. Around midnight or so we started hearing it talk once every 30 - 60min. Eventually I went in quietly and took the doll away from her. She was asleep with her head on top of Elmo’s hand so every time she moved he talked. Somehow it woke us up but not her. More amusing still, when she woke up this morning, we heard her whining, “I want Elmo.”.