We are a family who likes to sleep.
We are also a family who likes to sleep in places other than our own beds. As I am typing this, my husband is asleep in the chair across from me, my toddler is tangled up in the covers in my bed, and the rest of the children (minus the baby) are having a slumber party in the boy’s room!
But, the actual sleeping isn’t usually the issue in a growing family, now is it?
It’s either the getting to sleep or the staying asleep that causes us angst.
Nicole asked
How do you deal with sleep issues?…I feel exhausted with nursing a baby and having waking toddlers. I’m leery of them sharing a room too soon because I’m scared they would wake each other up! How do you do it? Do you sleep train your kids?
To answer these questions, I thought I’d give you a glimpse of what we do, what works, what doesn’t, and what I’d like to see us do better, and then turn it over to all of you!
The rooms are divided up as Girls and Boys. The baby currently sleeps in our room in his crib for most of the night and in bed with me some of the night (he is very easily congested and doesn’t do well co-sleeping).
I usually move baby out of our room about the time baby turns 10 months or so. That is a totally arbitrary age. It just seems, for some reason, about that time frame is when I feel like I need them to start sleeping through the night, and sleeping through the night is better facilitated outside of my room. It usually takes me another couple of months to get them to the point of sleeping through the night. So, yes, in a sense I do sleep train, but it’s a pretty wimpy version of what most people mean when they say “sleep train.” I really like the book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution
by Elizabeth Pantley. I use a lot of her ideas when I move baby to a different room.
The room I move baby to depends on which room is the calmest at night. Currently, that would be the girls room; however, this has not always been the case. I have a daughter who struggled with sleep issues for many years. A couple of years ago, her room would not have been a good place for baby.
When I moved Micah out of our room, he went into a room by himself for a time. I managed to create this environment by putting our preschool aged son in his sister’s room and moving my oldest downstairs to a small room of his own (which he hated, by the way…so much for kids needing their own rooms, huh?). We kept this arrangement until Micah was able to go to sleep calmly, at which time we put his brother back in the room with him.
The little boys' toddler beds.
I have found that at a certain point, children become immune to the cries of a baby in the night. I don’t know what the precise age is, but around here it seems by about 20 months, they don’t even flinch in their sleep when they hear a baby cry. In fact, I remember nights of babies crying very loudly for a very long time and my oldest son sleeping right through it all!
In order to cope with the inevitable sleepless nights, we have a mandatory Rest Time. Each afternoon, I either snuggle up with the toddler or the baby while everyone else heads to their beds or another secluded area of the house, for an hour of rest. And yes, I sleep too! I find having the children in their own beds works best for keeping them “restful” during this time. However, if I really want the toddler to sleep, he almost invariably has to be in my arms…which is fine with me since warm squishy toddlers make for warm sleepy mommies! It isn’t uncommon for me to get the toddler to sleep while we sit cuddled up in the recliner, only to eventually move to the couch with the baby because he’s awakened and fall back asleep with him in my arms. (I seriously look forward to this time of day!)
As you know, bedtime here is later than in many households, and all the children (except for the baby, who is usually down by 8pm) go to bed at the same time. This greatly reduces the desire of the children to get up and see what might be going on that they are missing by being in bed. I suppose at some point this will have to change, but for now, it works well.
We try to keep a rhythm to our evenings as well. Around 7:30 or so, life begins to slow. On bath night, they bathe and put on jammies and often snuggle up on the couch for Bible Time or a movie or grab a book to read. About 8:50, the evening paraphernalia is put away and teeth are brushed, prayers are said, and children are carted off to bed.
We do not allow a lot of commotion after everyone is in bed. That means no jabbering, no getting out of bed, no asking Mommy for this or that. Now, don’t get me wrong, all this still happens, we just keep a pretty tight rein on it all. That said, I do try to stay in tune with my children to decide if what they need is truly a need. I do take the time to sit up and talk with children who need to hash something out or get a drink for a child who truly is parched. I’ve come to realize you cannot parent with an iron fist because not everything is done in defiance. Parenting with wisdom is much more effective.
) is quite enough for mommy to help with in a 24 hour period.
