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Indiana Babies
fruitcakes
member
sleeping issues - separation anxiety?
fruitcakes
member
Olivia refuses to sleep in her crib. We follow the same bedtime routine (dinner, short play, bath, PJs, books, bed) but as soon as we put her in the crib, she starts screaming. This happens for a couple hours each night until she finally goes to sleep. Then sometime between Midnight-4am, she wakes up and the cycle starts over.
First
I thought it was just a development milestone, then I thought it was
her ear infection, then teething, now I just have NO idea - could it be
separation anxiety? As soon as we pick her up, she goes back to
sleep. It's not her diaper, temperature of the room or hunger.
Because this has been going on for so long, we're all exhausted and grumpy, Olivia's naps are all screwed up and I have no idea what to do. Jake usually brings her in bed with us, but I feel like it's creating a bad habit, plus I can't sleep at all when she's in our bed. CIO is not an option for us. She's not whimpering, this is full blown screaming.
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Re: sleeping issues - separation anxiety?
Let's see if the Bump eats this again!
I've been there! I think we ended up just playing with night time routine. Spice up the time try 815 instead of 830, read the books in bed, or let her have extra splash time in the tub. We found that she has some sort of magical "witching hour," a window of when putting her down is optimal.
We still have the random middle of the night waking where she seems completely awake until you pick her up. I bring her to bed with us, DH hates it but I know no other way to let us all get some sleep.
I'm thinking for us, that Lily is just ready for a big girl bed. Usually when she has these kinds of waking she is laying as if she's trying to make a plus sign with the bed.
I offer hugs and your favorite caffeine drink.
GEEZ.. I've been trying to reply forever...stupid bump.
We have been dealing with the SAME.EXACT.THING for the past month! Just now coming out of it though. In our case it was teeth, 4 molars coming through and an eye tooth! They finally broke through this past week and now we are going on night 3 of semi-normal sleep. I think the teeth were coming up and going back down for the past several weeks and when I was checking I couldn't feel anything so I also didn't suspect teeth but apparently that's what it was.
The only thing we did was go in and lay her back down and rub her back until she went back to sleep. Sometimes if I had to, I would pick her up and rock her, but I really tried to avoid getting into that habit. CIO was also not an option for us b/c it never ended and it was all out screaming/hyperventilating. I even asked my pedi about it and she said that since we ruled out ear infections, etc. then you have to struggle through it and make sure your not creating any bad habits, ie. picking her up, bringing her back to bed with you, feeding, etc.
Once the teeth popped through she now wakes up and cries, but more of a whine and puts herself back to sleep within 10-15 mins.
I'm sorry b/c I totally know exactly what your going through... just hang in there. I even had to take her to my parents for one night so I could at least get one nights worth of sleep b/c my nerves were shot.
Maybe try some tylenol/motrin one night and see if it helps any.
BFP #2 11/4/12 EDD 7/20/12 missed M/C 12/13/12 @8w5d D&C 12/21/12
DX 2/7/13 with an alloimmunity + for anti-paternal antibodies started Lovenox daily & BA
BFP 2/16/13 EDD 10/28/13
Thanks for the responses
I've tried to go in and rub her back, but she wakes up immediately standing with the all-out screaming and hyperventilating. I've tried just standing there (in the dark, not looking at her) and rubbing her back, but she won't calm down enough to even think about sitting/laying down.
Last night I gave her tylenol thinking that maybe it was her teeth, but the same thing happened. I sat next to her crib and rubbed her palm and sang until she feel asleep. She did sleep until 4am, which is the longest stretch in a while.
I actually considered putting her mattress on the floor for a night and seeing how she did even though it's *far* too early for a toddler bed for her.
Do you think she is scared of her crib? Could there be something going on at day care that is making her fearful of the crib?
A co-workers little girl went through something similar and they figured out that there was a child at daycare who would thrash and almost convulse in the crib at their daughters day care and it scared the little girl so much that she wouldn't sleep in her crib.
I know at our DCP for a while when a bunch of the kids got mobile in the infant room before they moved to toddlers they used the cribs to corral them, and Evie would get really mad because she didn't like being contained. Luckily I noticed it quickly and asked them not to use the crib that way.
Just a thought.....We have had horrible sleep issues the past week or so as well. Makes for tired mama.......
Interesting thought - I'll ask daycare today, but I don't necessarily think that's it. She naps "ok" in it at daycare and at home, it just seems to be an issue at night.
I will ask them though.
I'm not going to be much help because I couldn't do CIO very well. When Haley would have spells like this (and they were always phases that lasted anywhere from a couple nights to a couple months), I would pick her up and rock her to calm her down and get her to go back to sleep. She would FLIP OUT when I would just stand next to her bed and rub her back, so that never really helped.
I'm really sorry you're having to deal with this and that I don't have any useful suggestions. I hope she snaps out it soon.
Hmmm, I think I wrote this post, verbatim, a couple of months ago.
We kept bringing her into the bed. Yes, I know we're creating bad habits, but once she was through this separation anxiety phase we've found we're only bringing her into our bed 2x/week (the other nights she STTN).
I wish I could help you. Nothing we did worked, either...and we weren't willing to do extinction CIO.
Other than ruling out medical problems or CIO I"m not sure what to suggest - here is my experience.
This happened to us once where Andrew would flip out at the sight of his crib. Since he'd never done that before I was pretty baffled.
At first we blamed sep anxiety or nightmares or something unknown, but he was screaming bloody murder so I told the doctor something is wrong.
That's when they ran the CT scan and found he had a sinus infection with no other symtpoms!
AFTER the sinus infection went away, he kept doing the same thing - screaming blood murder. We picked him up a couple of minutes and he was fine....then at that point, we assumed it was bad habit he'd developed when he was so sick. We did CIO and he cried for about 15 minutes and was fine from that night out. Now we lay him in his bed wide awake and he talks for 5-45 minutes and has a huge smile on his face when I lay him in his crib.
p.s. when we did CIO we went in every 10 minutes, then 12, then 15 (I did large intervals since he previously slept so well so I knew he had coping mechanisms)...but we only had to go in once :-)
this is exactly what emma was doing when she was ready for her toddler bed. the dr. said that she was crying because that was the only way to get us. once she was in her toddler bed, she slept all night again. this is only a good option though if she is able to get in and out of her own bed to come and get you. also, only a good option if you are ready to play the game of getting her to stay in her bed on her own at bedtime. we aren't which is why we still hold her until she goes to sleep!
good luck!!!
Thanks for all the feedback!
I think I'm going to call the pediatrician so that I can rule out something medical with 100% confidence.
I don't blame you :-) I did that about 3 times. haha!
I could have written this myself. Except we have created that bad habit of whenever she wakes up we put her in bed with us so we can actually get some sleep. CIO is not an option for us either.