Sleep Wars

In the world of babies, toddlers, and even preschoolers, getting an uninterrupted night of sleep is a challenge. Anyone who tells you that their young children sleep through the night, in their own beds, all the time is either unbelievably lucky or lying to you.

In my 3 and 3/4 years of parenting young children we have tried it all sleep-wise. We had our babies sleep in a crib or bassinet in our room, co-sleep in our bed, sleep in various types of child beds in their own rooms and in a shared room. Each method seems to work for a while, but kids are constantly growing, changing, entering new phases, wrapping up old phases--hence the plethora of sleeping arrangements in our house.

My kids seem to be particularly high maintenance at night. The most recent sleep phase is that our kids sleep in their own beds in their shared room. It worked ok for a while, but before long it was back to musical beds. My daughter started waking up frequently at night in her toddler bed. I got tired of getting up to frequently to soothe her, so brought her back into bed with us part way through each night. Then my son decided that his room is spooky and he is scared of everything at night. This requires that we stay with him until he falls asleep, and even then he still sneaks into our bed in the wee hours. At first he made a big production of it, tears, etc. However, he's a smart cookie, and because we kept bringing him back to his own bed, he switched to sneaking in with stealth mode.

Stealth mode doesn't work when his sister has already had a rough night and is already in bed with us. In these instances, there is simply no room in bed so it's hard to be stealthy. Since the weather has gotten cold my son has spent a night or or two curled up at the foot of our bed with the dog (Pepper only sleeps with us when it's cold). Five beings in one queen sized bed is not fun. Both my husband and I have resorted, on different nights, to transfer and sleep blissfully alone in my son's abandoned twin bed.

Once again something has to give. Our newest tactic is that we provide enthusiastic praise when my son sleeps the whole night in his own bed. In the event that he does want to sneak into our bed in stealth he gets transferred to a crib mattress beside our bed (my mother in law's suggestion because that's what she did for my husband when he was little). We also just started weaning him, and his sister, from needing us to stay next to them until they fall asleep. This issue was forced by the fact that both my husband and I sometimes have meetings in the evening, or actually want to go out for a night of fun with friends (what???). Needing two parents on deck every night for bedtime is just impractical and makes solo bedtime duty pure torture for the parent on duty.

Once upon a time my son went to bed with just a bedtime story, a hug and kiss, and that was that. That's where I want to get back to: with both kids.

The problem with these sleep wars is that if you want things to really change you have to "be in it to win it." And that can mean a few nights of worse sleep than usual, and a lot of work bringing unwilling children back to their own beds, or telling them to lie down and go to sleep as you sit next to the door instead of their bed. We will get there eventually. Someday easier bedtime routines will stick and survive whatever new phase the kids are going through. I'm hoping for sooner rather than later.