Attachment Parenting
jaymiegerard
member
Words of Wisdom? Sleep-Lady Shuffle on bedsharing 1-yr-old...
jaymiegerard
member
Hi Everyone,
I mostly lurk, but am looking for any advice you have.
Tonight will be night one of the sleep-lady shuffle. My 1 yr old son who sleeps in bed with me (night and naps) has pushed me to my limit with 15 wake-ups in 8 hours last night. It's teething - a molar, but I just can't do it anymore. On a good night he only wakes 7 times, and he NEVER wakes less than 5 times. It's been over a year and my health/nerves are beyond sacrificed. It's time.
So, any words of wisdom? I'm kind of making it up, since we bedshare and he very easily crawls off the mattress and follows me to the door if I try to leave.
If this doesn't work I'm afraid I'll have to do a CIO method (though I am pretty sure the SLS will include crying too) :-(
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Re: Words of Wisdom? Sleep-Lady Shuffle on bedsharing 1-yr-old...
When this tooth pops thru, maybe then reevaluate and see what you want to do. The SLS and NCSS have good, gentle ideas
What just happened in my diaper?!
Definitely give Advil.
If you're at the breaking point, YOU need to get more sleep. This might mean DH needs to step it up and DS needs to be in his own room either way. I've been to the breaking point and it was vital that I let someone else take over enough that I got some sleep.
As for sleep training, it's also okay to decide it's time. DS sleeps in his own room now (we bedshared a lot until about 6 months and had more or less stopped by 9) which allows me to sleep through some of his "wake ups" where he's not really awake.
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Cloth Diaper Review Sheet
What are you doing for the teething? (It seems like he needs more if he's increased his number of wakings.)
Why is he waking up (when not teething)? Does he nurse at these times? Do you rock him? Do you lay there right next to him and pat his back? Does he just cry until he goes back to sleep?
Have you been checking his diaper? (DD - at nearly 2.5yr - wakes 1-3 times per night due to peeing in her diaper.) Have you checked to see if he's thirsty (or hungry)?
I realize you've probably been through all of this, but you mentioned none of it in your post, so I had to ask as the answers would change how I responded to the situation.
I'll tell you what we did. DD woke many times a night to nurse at the age of 1 and tossed and turned enough that having her in our bed with both of us wasn't working well for me. So, I decided to move our old (queen) mattress to the floor immediately next to our bed, and she would sleep there - and I would mostly be sleeping with her, but it was a bit more space. And I decided to do some partial night weaning - she could nurse twice in the night, but only after midnight (I think that was the time I picked). (I used a modification of the Dr. Jay Gordon method - I tried it more by-the-"book" at first, but it needed a bit of tweaking for us.)
When she had been getting up (even just sitting) or trying to crawl off the bed, I would pick her up and put her back down. The first time, I'd say "It's bedtime, you need to lay down and go to sleep." The second time, "Lay down and go to sleep." The third - and the dozens of times afterwards - I'd say nothing, just pick her up (even as I was still laying in bed, something of a muscular challenge
) and lay her back down. After a few days, she mostly stopped this behavior. (I have to do it on and off even now, as she invents new ways to test the rules, but that's the whole purpose of a toddler.)
Eventually, I change the nursing to once a night, and there is still some crying over that occasionally, depending on the night. But I'm there laying next to her and ask her to snuggle instead.
But the other times she wakes up (well, partially wakes up, and tosses and turns if I don't do anything), I check and 95% of the time discover that she's got a wet diaper that needs to be changed. So I keep a stack by the bed and change her in there. The other alternative is that my husband is snoring and keeping her from falling all the way back asleep (so we both tell him to be quiet) or she's tangled in the blanket (which she generally hates unless she's asleep).
It takes a lot of time, though, and I would absolutely deal with the teething first.
I would definitely wait until the teeth are in. Motrin is great. My pharmacist FIL told me to rub benedryl on his gums too for swelling and it seemed to help a lot.
We used the Sleep Lady Shuffle this summer and it *kind of* worked. We moved him out of our bed at the same time. What ended up working in the end was putting him down in his own bed (not crib, a twin mattress on the floor in his room) and then when he got up, we just made him a floor mat in our room near our bed for him to sleep on. The past three weeks we've finally got it down! We have a sticker chart for sleeping all night in the big kid bed or floor mat (he's really into it, but older than your LO) and I've managed to wean him off rocking to sleep this week! He wants that sticker so badly, he just walks into our room now and collapses on the floor and goes back to sleep.
It took months though. "The Shuffle" isn't a fast solution either. It takes months.