Sleep/nap issues....Ugh! Help long (long, sorry)

kafunder

The LOs have always been great nappers and pretty good sleepers at night. For naps, they would easily go down drowsy but awake and sleep for over an hour for each nap. At night, they stopped needing to eat around 3 months, but still woke up a lot for paci's, which we could deal with. We transitioned them to their crib at night (we were doing naps in there for a while) and unswaddled them about 2.5 weeks ago, and initially, they were doing AWESOME. They were sleeping better than ever. They also have always done down super easy. We had never had to go into their room between bedtime and about 2am until recently.

All this leads up to last week, when they got RSV. They barely slept, and we brought them into our bed every night around 2am or so b/c they were either not tired or wheezing and we were worried. In our bed, they'd either sleep a bit or just lay awake. The also started napping horribly--for less than 45 minutes at a stretch, and then they'd be done. We thought all this was due to the nebulizer meds, which are stimulants. However, they've been off the meds for 4 days now, and they are still sleeping horribly. They've hardly slept the past 3 nights, even when we bring them into our bed, which I hate doing. For naps, they'll sleep in their cribs for 45 minutes and then wake up and be crying, cranky, and awful until we put them int he swing to sleep. So now, they are sleeping a lot in their swings and cribs, and these can't be good habits to introduce at nearly 5 months.

Does anyone have any advice? I am now sick with their cold and have had almost zero sleep for the past two weeks. I'm at the end of my rope and am literally hearing them cry even when they aren't. DH is the same. Help!

jcthomas1281

It may be bad, but I move the kids to their RNP to sleep when they have a cold. Thats the only way any of us get some sleep. It take a few days to get back to normal patterns after they are sick, but if they are completely better they cry it out for a bit. When my son needed the neb treatment it made him sleepy to sit there with me at night. Weird but true!

I say if they sleep in the swings, let them sleep until you feel better. It will take some tough love to get them back into the swing of things (pun totally intended) but its worth the rest you get.

GL!

caden

When my kids had bronchiolitis it messed with their sleep patterns too. And it took a few days to get back to normal, even after they were better. Vaccines do that to them too. I guess they don't take to change easily ; ) My advice is to just keep trying to get them to nap and hopefully they'll right themselves soon.

CarolynAndBrad

Our babies are about the same age and guess what?  They had RSV two weeks ago and were even hospitalized for three days.  They too, went way off their nap and eating schedule and I felt like I had newborns again.  Ugh!  But, the good news is they are almost nearly back to "normal" and I couldn't be more grateful - the backwards decline into sleep deprivation has been making mew nuts.  I too got a cold at the tail end of their illness and that didn't help.

 So all I can say is that, don't worry, they'll get back to normal.  Just give it a little bit mroe time.  I found I had to go backwards a little bit with training - I shaved 15-30 mins off their awake time since they were a little sleep deprived too from waking up so much.  Then, they go down more drowsy but awake instead of cranked up, and once the congestion was much clearer and they were showing signs of wanting to sleep better, I went back to my little sleep training tricks and every day we're making headway.  The good news is that Henry's 3am waking habit seems to have been kicked, so I'm hoping I may come out of this better than we were before!!