Our 18 Month Old Toddler Baby Won't Sleep
I am blown away with frustration and fatigued these days. I just do not know what to do! Our toddler baby won't sleep alone anymore and he certainly does not like to nap at all. Well, let me rephrase that last statement. He does go to bed alone at 9:30 pm - 10:00 pm at night (after a little rocking by dad and a little crying once placed in bed), but he gets back up in the middle of the night and refuses to go back to sleep unless in the bed with us. If we put him in our bed until he goes back to sleep and then put him in his crib, our baby will get back up again and again and again until we finally give up and put him in bed with us. None of us get sleep if we do not put him in bed with us. Although I love having our little "bundle of joy" close to my heart, I do not like how he tears me up in my sleep (he moves all over the place in his sleep; he pulls my hair and "plays" with my face in the mornings) and uses his feet to push his father on the edge of the bed in the mornings. He needs to start sleeping in his own bed.
I blame this all on my husband ... Just kidding :)
It has taken my husband MONTHS to understand and admit that I was right. I tried to explain to him that it was OK to lay the baby in his crib before he fell asleep, but he insisted on rocking him to sleep each time. I also let him know that it was OK to let our baby cry (with some comforting in between), so that he would get used to going to bed alone, my hubby did not listen. I shared all of the advice and experts articles on getting baby to sleep ... I pleaded with my husband for months (since our baby was almost a year old) and he gave me such a hard time about just laying our baby down to bed; stating that our son was "just a little baby" and "he will grow out of this". I told my husband that he won't be saying that when he has a spoiled child to deal with and he just ignored me.
I am not sure what to do at this point ...
In our baby's first year of life, nursing was my bonding time with our son, therefore rocking became my husband's time with the baby. This was "all good" for the first 6 to 8 months; the whole family rocked and comforted our baby. I began asking my husband to stop rocking him all of the time as we approached our baby's 1st birthday. Our baby had weaned himself from breastfeeding, so it was a great time to teach him to sleep through the night because he no longer nursed. My husband refused to adjust. He was not ready to stop rocking the baby to sleep, and I understood completely because it was an odd adjustment to go from breastfeeding to not nursing at all, so I did not complain about his rocking the baby to sleep all of the time. Now, our baby wants my husband to rock him to sleep and then wants to snuggle with me when he sleeps. I do not know what to do at this point; we have comforted and loved our baby to our own detriment. Yet, he is a very happy boy :)
He became our toddler baby with lots of changes ... Napping is the 1st.
By 14 months, he had stopped taking 2 naps a day. It was an adjustment for us, though kind of exciting because we presumed that he would start sleeping though the night. Our toddler baby used to get up by 8:00 a.m. - napped by 1:00 p.m. - went to bed by 10:00 p.m. - and slept though the night sometimes. Once we thought that one nap schedule was established, it started taking longer and more rocking to get our baby to sleep for his nap and bedtime. He also started waking up at night and refusing to go to sleep unless in the bed with us. My husband starting to become frustrated because he had to rock our son for over an hour each time; sometimes our baby would not sleep at all and then become unbearably cranky and fall asleep at 3:30 or 4:00pm. Everything just became a mess. My husband started getting impatient and telling me to rock him; which I would not because he carried it on so long instead of just reading the articles I sent him and following the instructions. I finally started laying the baby down, letting him cry for a few minutes and then settling him. My husband got tired of the crying, so he changed the process to rocking our toddler baby and then laying him down. Now that our baby is 18 months old, he still gets up before or around 8:00 a.m. and goes to bed at the same time, but his nap is either later than 1:00 p.m. or he will not nap at all. It is rough either way because our baby starts getting cranky around around 12-12:30 p.m. as if he was ready to nap. The difference is that he does not settle to nap and remains cranky for quite some time.
Well, that backfired ...
Now our baby flips out if my husband rocks him and then lays him down. It is to the point that our baby won't sleep in the afternoon (he will not nap until almost evening even though he is getting up at the same time as usual). We have to go in and settle him for longer periods of time ... if we do not, he will not stop crying. He gets so upset that he cannot nap. Tonight, I finally took over and put our baby to bed directly after bath (we played for quite a while after the tub in hopes that it would tire him out). He fussed for like a minute, talked to himself for about 10 minutes and then fell asleep. Regardless, of how he fell asleep tonight, I know that he won't sleep though the night. The plus is that we no longer have to rock him to sleep at bedtime. I guess that's a step in the right direction ...
I am interested to know if you have suggestions as to how we can get him to take a nap at his old time (1:00 p.m.) and sleep though the night. Our toddler baby will not stop crying (really, he just gets angrier no matter how tired) long enough to go to sleep.
In Motherly Love,
Mother Baby Child
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