22 months and still NOT sleeping through the night?!?! say it ain’t so!
I am going a bit crazy. My son systematically wakes up around 2 am, i am guessing it is when the new sleep cycle begins?! he wakes up and cries calling for me, or papa (usually me). How have I gotten back to this point at almost 24 months?!?!?
see… he was sleeping through the night (or, til about 6am, good enough for me…) and then it got really cold in NYC (by the way—winter— totally OVER IT) and so started waking up, and he had peed on himself. So I change his diaper and then try to put him back to sleep. Now, I am going to be completely honest, I did decide on more than one occasion, to just bring him to bed with me. Why? well, because I work full time, outside the home, and if I have to choose between rocking him to bed for 45 minutes or sleeping those 45 minutes, I want to choose the latter.
Another thing I should say is that this little boy is no joke.. he can be sleeping and as soon as his body hits the crib mattress he wakes up! To make matters worse, he doesn’t have a paci, or a blankie, or a stuffed animal… his soothing element of preference? PELO. Mama’s HAIR. He strokes it, and sometimes pulls it… (in case you’re wondering I do sometimes wish he had a stuffed toy or something instead of my hair!) he is quite obsessed.
Now, this sleeping situation has become a problem for several reasons, the main one being that— Mama needs to sleep, and bringing him to my bed is not a viable long term solution: because he moves around too much, (seriously, sometimes i think he has restless leg syndrome— could that be a thing? could he have that?!? he swings his legs all over the place— YES in my face, on my neck, on my head… on Papa’s head, ribs and face too) and because I place myself in such a way as to prevent me falling off the bed (again, hard to do because he’s moving around, and because for a such a little guy, he actually occupies waaaay too much space)… the worse thing is that this has become a sensitive subject between Hubbs and I, because he believes Enzo is having a “caprice” and he cries because he knows mama will come to get him. So i am just making things worse when I go in there, and making it worse by bringing him to the room. I of course, counter that by saying that when he is sick, all bets are off (he was sick a couple of weeks ago) and that I bring him into the bed because 1. his room is too cold right now and 2. I just want to get some sleep. Hubbs thinks i’m creating a monster, that this is not normal behavior for an almost two year old (Enzo, time to sleep, you’re a big boy now) and that I am just spoiling him.
and I am so torn. I feel awful about letting him cry, makes me sick to my stomach, and I really don’t get a good night sleep when he is in bed with us, and this has become a source of disaccord between my hubby and I.
Any tips? (sidenote, i should mention, the only compromise I can think of is to sleep in the living room with Enzo, on the pull out couch, that way everyone sleeps better)
would love to hear your thoughts, mamas (and papas tambien!)
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