sleep stalling

it has taken me so long to post about this because i have been so tired, but madelyn slept all night last night so as promised here is the latest on our recent sleeping problems.

a few weeks ago madelyn started stalling when going to bed at night. we had a short stint with this when we first potty trained, but got past it. so we will put her down at 8 and she comes up with excuses to be awake until finally falling asleep at 10pm which leaves us with a crabby girl the next day. it was mainly annoying, but not too bad.

then this stalling starting working its way to nap time too. it would take an hour or more of back and forth trips to her room and the bathroom before she would finally go to sleep for 2-4 hours. obviously she still needed the nap.

we took a tip from 'love and logic' and told her that she could choose to go to sleep or stay awake but she could not come back out of her room. that solved the going to bed problem pretty well and also worked at nap time.

then this week it all changed. not only did she start stalling going to bed but she started waking up at night and refusing to go back to sleep - or even go back to her room. wednesday and thursday nights were the worst because not only was madelyn waking up at 2 or 3 in the morning and staying awake until matt got up for work, but mason started getting up a few times a night to eat! this meant no sleep for me.

it was really the worst time for this to happen too. matt and i both were under a lot of stress with work and staying up late at night working. i even had to have matt come home one day this week so that i could meet a deadline, resolve some urgent problems, and attend a two hour plus meeting. so matt and i were already worn thin and then the kids stopped sleeping.

it wasn't too surprising that mason stopped sleeping through the night because madelyn stopped right after her 4-month appointment too as a sign that it was time to start solids. i want to wait a little longer on solids with mason because he isn't quite sitting up well enough just yet. once madelyn gets back to sleeping through the night i will let him fuss for 10 minutes before going in to feed him so that i can see if his waking up is a new habit or if it really is hunger. i am hoping that it isn't really hunger and that he will go back to sleeping through the night again. either way, he is going to be starting solids soon.

so back to madelyn. the two worst nights this week she was complaining about "monsters" - under her bed, in the curtains, outside, etc. i don't think she was actually afraid, but had found something to say that made us cave and stay in her room or let her come into our bed. she did the same thing with saying that she needed to go potty because that was a guaranteed success at putting off bed time.

another element to this has been asking to leave the lights on. again, she isn't scared of the dark because she gets up and turns them on herself and can see well enough to climb up on her bookshelf to reach the remote to her fan/light. i am very anti-nightlight because i feel that it just creates more shadows to be 'scared' of at night (speaking from personal childhood experience and slight fear of the dark). and several other moms have confirmed that theory for me. i also think that they reinforce the idea that there is something to be afraid of in the dark. a nightlight will only come in if nothing else works.

it seems that this is just a phase for kids her age - especially around halloween. they were talking about it on 'the view' this week and several friends/neighbors commented that their kids are going through the same thing right now.

what has been working has been praying with her (like we normally do) and then explaining that monsters are pretend and that God is always with her to protect her - there is nothing to be afraid of. last night she told me that "monsters are pretend" while we were getting ready for bed and agreed that, yes, God would keep her safe and there is nothing to be afraid of. i even heard her comforting mason with "there is nothing to be afraid of" earlier in the day. and i am super happy to report that madelyn went to bed around 8pm and didn't wake up until almost 8:30am! i think she slept well because she was exhausted and we ran her humidifier for some white noise to drown out the wind and train noise outside since noises seem to be the main source of her discontentment at night.

i am praying that she is going to go back to sleeping peacefully all night with the lights off again. she was so proud of herself this morning for staying in her room all night and bragged to mommy and daddy about the good job she did. she did ask for light at nap time, but she also didn't want to lay down in her room at all. i left her blinds open as a compromise and she has been down for over two hours now.

stay tuned, but i am hoping that this saga is now over. love.