Q&A: 3 1/2 year old waking up in the middle of the night

Amy writes:

"I should preface this question by saying that my son has always had sleep issues of one kind or another (he didn't really sleep through the night until age 1 and often takes a long time to fall asleep) and we have not been strict about "sleep training." He is now nearly 3 1/2. While we have a good routine for getting him to sleep, he has started waking up in the night. It started about two months ago. There was no big change at the time which would have prompted this. He will wake up around 2 or 3 and either want me to come to his room or want to sleep in our bed. Also, he wants a bit of milk in his sippy cup. Not only is the milk bad for his teeth, it requires one of us to get out of bed to get it for him. After we go through this routine, he is back to sleep in about two minutes. Needless to say this is exhausting. We need to figure out a way to break this routine. Does anyone have any advice?"

First of all, this is totally normal. 3 1/2 is the Worst Age Ever* and along with the tantrums, whining, lying, drama, resistance, fragility, defiance and other nonsense often comes sleep disruptions.

Both of my kids could stay asleep once they fell asleep, but the going to sleep was killer. It took literally hours to get them to go to bed and then fall asleep when they were that age. This sounds like the opposite, that he can get to sleep but then he wakes up.

The good news is that he's going to go back to sleeping all night on his own in a few months, just because he'll be going from this stage of disequilibrium into a stage of equilibirum again. (The disequilibrium/equilibrium thing is from our favorite book about 3.5-year-olds ever, Your Three-Year-Old: Friend Or Enemy by Ames and Ilg.)

The bad news is that it won't happen tonight. So this is what I'd try:

1. No milk, but you can have water. Leave a sippy of water next to his bed so he can get it himself and leave you out of the loop in the middle of the night.

2. Decide whether you care if he comes in with you or not. If you don't, then maybe make a rule that he can come in with you if he sneaks in and doesn't wake you up. (I'd bet cash money that more kids spent time in bed with their parents at age 3 than as babies or toddlers.) If you don't want him in with you, then maybe come up with some ideas together about what he's allowed to do when he wakes up that doesn't involve calling out for you. (Read books? Snuggle a stuffed animal? Play with another toy?)

And of course there's no guarantee that either of these things will help, but at least you're trying something.

Who's got ideas or stories for Amy?

 

* For me personally, the 15-21 month stretch was worse both times, but then I really don't love toddlers anyway and just don't have the personal qualities necessary to parent toddlers with any kind of grace. But I think probably for most people 3.5 is worse.

 

Comments

[Bonnie]

SO feeling your pain; my 3 yr 11 month old is doing the same thing. So is his 18-month-old sister. We're on survival mode.

[Jessie]

My 3y5mo is doing the same thing! Except that she's always started out sleeping in her own bed and then been put into or walked herself into our bed in the middle of the night (which is fine with us, obviously). But NOW -- she's coming in at like 5 (we sleep till 7 or 7:30), squirming around for half an hour, and then finally telling me she needs to pee (just potty trained a couple months ago), and of course I have to go with her. Then she won't go back to sleep after that.

I've started telling her she just needs to go to sleep in her own bed after the bathroom. She mostly doesn't fight it. Sometimes she even goes back to sleep! And I guess if I were more lucid in the middle of the night, I'd make her get up and pee right when the squirming starts, but I never am.

But yeah man, DRAMA. So much drama.

[Woollythinker.wordpress.com]

My daughter (also 3.5) has always been a lousy sleeper. She used to sleep through more often (but never very consistently), then got into the habit of calling me a few times most nights. Just wanting company for a few minutes, sometimes a drink of water.

Recently I decided the time had come to sort this out, and opted to go the incentive route: a sticker reward chart, plus a special treat for breakfast - yoghurt in a tube. (Novelty value!) It worked like a charm but the interesting thing is, the elaborate system of rewards we planned turned out to be completely unnecessary. She's just in it for the stickers (and the sense of pride/accomplishment, I think). They're a much more powerful motivator than I expected. Not every kid will respond this way of course, and the rewards may have to play a greater role, but it's worth trying!

[meggiemoo]

I am in 3-1/2 year old hell. Both of our kids have had sleeping issues, but my DD got to the point where she would happily lay in her crib and fall asleep on her own. Once we moved her to a regular bed about 8 months ago, it's been terrible. Not falling asleep, not staying asleep. Ugh. I've tried the motivation route, the reward route, the talking-about-what's-going-to-happen-that-night route, (the yelling route, not proud about that).

After waking up so many times with babies over the years, this back-sliding seems particularly cruel. My only hope is that her older brother (now 6-1/2) was possibly a worse sleeper than she is and now sleeps very deeply all night. So she'll get there. They'll all get there...

[MJ]

Ugh. Three-and-a-half SUCKS. My son is more like three-and-three-quarters. Once he's asleep he generally stays asleep, unless his crappy-sleeping 17-month-old sister wakes him up in the night, but getting him to sleep is a task.

We often encounter random bedtime drama, for really no apparent reason. And even on a good night, I have to lie in bed with him until he's asleep. I've tried a few things to not have to do this, but they just end in a massive tantrum/drama/freakout that really isn't worth it.

I've now been telling him that when he's ready to go to sleep on his own, he can let me know, and we will go get a Twilight Turtle or something to keep him company. He said maybe when he's 6. SIGH.

I have a friend whose son was getting up in the middle of the night (also age 3.5). They got him one of those alarm clocks that turn green when it's okay to get up and it has worked for them. Maybe something to consider.

Oh, and PS, the "Your Three Year Old: Friend or Enemy" book is EXCELLENT and made me feel tons better about all of the really trying behavior. He turns 4 in two and a half months and I cannot wait!

[jen]

We had this issue around the same age. Sometimes I would be so tired, I would let him in bed with us without even realizing it and then no one slept well. The only thing that worked was consistency. I decided I would tuck him back in and leave the room. No talking. We did this for two weeks and he finally stopped waking up. It also seemed important that I not be in his room when he fell asleep. During those two weeks, I also had to physically be out of the house (I would go for a run) and my husband had to take over the getting to bed process. Good luck!

[MMNJ]

YES.

"3 1/2 is the Worst Age Ever* and along with the tantrums, whining, lying, drama, resistance, fragility, defiance and other nonsense often comes sleep disruptions"

Why?? Why with the lying and the defiance and the temperment and the mean spirit? On the flip side, there are these bursts of sheer brilliance and joy and glimpses of complete and utter enchantment - I can't believe that two totally different children inhabit the same body.

It's so hard to stay focused on the good. I wish I was better. I wish that when we're in the heat of conflict, that I didn't react with rage (it's not even anger, it's rage). I wish that I could lower my expectations, and shrug it off knowing that it's just her being 3. If this is any indication of what 16 is like, I am downright screwed.

[meggiemoo]

@MMNJ...you and me both. For what it's worth, I knew from the time that my DD was an infant that she was going to give me a run for my money. She's quite different from her brother. He also had horrendous 3-year-old stuff, but he doesn't have the persistence of his sister. That girl can out-tantrum, out-whine, out-annoy anyone. It's like she's going for the pre-school version of Survivor.

[Mom In France]

Thanks for reminding me that 3ish is sucky for lots of people and it's not just my #2. (I know, misery loves company). We're going through our own issues and trying to stay sane. Good luck!

[Nelle]

Hi! We had this same issue over the summer with our 3.75 year old.... and we may have just gotten lucky, but I'll share what we did that worked.

First, a bit of background: He was totally ready to be night time potty trained, no pullups, but we had to get him used to waking up to pee, not just going in his diaper. So we taught him to come & get us if he had to go potty, as opposed to the previous version (screaming our names from his room - not a pleasant way to wake up at 5AM). This worked great, and it only took a few days before no more accidents (like I said, he was ready), but it started this habit of him waking up earlier & earlier (2AM, 1:30 AM, etc...) every other other night or so to go potty. He didn't need to do that - but it was this habit that was somehow in his subconscious. Afterwards, he'd get back in bed with us, and I couldn't sleep (though my husband & he didn't seem to have this issue). We tried several times to put him back in his bed, but he'd freak (b/c he was so tired), and it's not worth the struggle in the middle of the night. Plus, we were encouraging him to get up & tell us, so turning that positive behavior into a situation where he becomes unhappy seemed counter productive. My husband didn't care either way (oh, people who are good sleepers), but having him in our bed was horrible for me - he kicked, I could never get back to sleep, etc... so I took over ( and then got famously lucky this worked). This is what we did:

1. I ordered one of those clocks that changes colors at certain times, and told him that there was a special big boy present coming for him in the mail. This is the one we ordered - love this thing & it wasn't too expensive, considering what it does for us. (http://www.diapers.com/p/onaroo-teach-me-time-talking-alarm-clock-and-night-light-97158) LOVE THIS THING

2. When it arrived, we made a HUGE deal about the clock. It's so cool, it's yours, just for your room, it lights up, etc....Set it up & it talks, so he had lots of fun pushing the buttons. It's actually across the room from him (not right next to his bed), but whatever.

3. We talked about the yellow & green. If you get up to go potty, yellow means you have to get back in your bed, green means you can get in our bed (I think I set it at like 6 to turn green - something reasonable). We didn't talk at all about staying in your room or anything, just what happens after you wake up to go potty. I was terrified we'd regress on the night time potty breaks, ie, he'd start wetting the bed if he saw a yellow clock, thinking he was supposed to say in bed, so we just didn't talk about that at all - just what happens after you potty at night.

4. The first night, he came in at 3:00, saying, "the clock is yellow, but I have to potty". So we took him, and then as soon as he flushed, he ran right back to his room. Seriously - no questions, whining, etc.. .

5. After about three wakeups in the middle of the night, all just like the one above, he stopped doing it entirely. Full on, doesn't even get up in the middle of the night at all, and is totally dry. If I weren't already married, I'd marry that clock.

Side note, just in case you were wondering why I was so insistent that he come get us if he had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night instead of coming to get us:
He has this habit of standing on a stool & throwing himself forward to hold the top of the lid to lean over & pee. All I could picture was him doing that in the middle of the night & smashing his face against the top of the toilet. I mean, it makes me nervous when he's not half asleep. I figured we'd work on technique when I wasn't so tired, which we did, over time.

Just a few months later (4 is a revelation, you'll see :), he gets up & goes on his own, and I've shifted the clock time later & later, since he'll just hang out in his room until it's green if he's awake.

I honestly think creating a new figure of authority (the clock) is what worked, since it removed the idea of saying no when he was half asleep, and helped him (subconsciously) stay asleep, since if he's not getting into bed with us, there's no reason to wake up.

Good luck!

[laura]

Thanks to pregnancy and back-to-back breastfeeding, I can count on one hand the number of nights of uninterrupted sleep I've had in the last 7 years. #2 has been a much better sleeper (read: only up once a night) until two weeks ago, when I discovered I was pregnant (Ack! SURPRISE!). Now she's up every night at least twice. Last night, four times.

What works for #1 is lots of water during the day so she doesn't have to pee at night. Her body wakes her up with a nightmare if she has to pee, then she has a harder time settling back down. She's pretty much nocturnally independent though, thanks to her little pig-shaped iPod dock. She just turns on a story or some sleepy time music and goes back to sleep eventually. Yes, I pay for the wakeups the next day, but at least they are not disrupting my sleep.

For #2, I got nothing. She gets a water bottle by her bed, a night light, and a snack for when she wakes up hungry in the wee hours of the morning. She's brilliant at entertaining herself from 5:45-7am.

But the middle of the night is awful! It's like she isn't quite awake, so she is just sitting up in bed weeping and thirsty, but unable to take care of her own needs. If I let her cry herself awake and then get her own drink, she wakes up more times later on.

The only thing that has seemed to help is a Chinese herbal medicine that our acupuncturist has given me. It's a kids' formula called Silent Night. If I can manage to give it to them consistently for a few days, they start sleeping through. However, it's prohibitively expensive with both kids going through one $40 bottle in under a week.

ALSO - save yourself the money of those fancy "Time to get up" alarm clocks and just get a cheap $5 light timer from the hardware store. Plug any little night light into it, and when the night light goes off, voila - it's "morning!" (Around here, "morning" isn't until 7am. :D

[Annika]

OMG, Magda. You are the first person I have ever heard say that the early toddler time was harder than 3.5 and I just want to kiss you because something like 13 months to 2.5 was HELL for me both times.

[Annika]

(Sorry, I forgot to add this because I was so excited to find a kindred spirit in Magda.) Data point for the OP: my son was mostly delightful at 3.5 but he did start getting in bed with us in the middle of the night every night. At the time I thought it was insecurity because I was pregnant but maybe it's just a 3.5 year old thing.

[J]

My guy is just shy of 3.5, and he is miserable. Sleep is no worse than usual for us at this point, but his rage and tantrums can only be matched by MY rage and tantrums (guess I know from where he gets it). I dug out the Ames/ilg, which I had from when my comparatively easygoing daughter was this age. Reading it helped - except for the part where the authors reminded me that most children are potty trained by this age! Awgggggh!

My solace is that I can see that he's stuck between baby and big kid. His fine motor skills have improved fifty fold within weeks- if not days.

One thing that has helped us is playing baby with him - if that makes sense. When he does something babyish like night waking or throwing tantrums, I will often get him out of it by asking if he wants to be "baby ". He often does, so I pick him up and rock him and sing to him as though he's a baby. Then I say that babies go in their cribs, put him in his bed, and often he's gotten so caught up in the little game and feels so soothed that he can either fall asleep again or be done with his tantrum.

[Mollie]

3.5 has been so hard :( And, of course we complicated matters by having a baby last month to throw off what little equilibrium we had :p

We went through a month or so of my son waking in the night once or twice, and I really wanted to curb it before #2 arrived - what worked for us was glow stars. We bought a big pack, and I told him that every night he stayed in his bed all night he could have another star for his ceiling. Same for naps. The novelty wore off after a couple weeks, but it worked long enough to get him back in the routine for the most part, and not the up-down-up-down game we were playing for a while there :)

[lydia]

My two kids were both crappy sleepers in different ways, but with both of them things were mostly smoothed out around age 4. So maybe you have that to look forward to?

[Wilhelmina]

No great hope of deliverance from me, we co-slept during that phase and the ones that followed. Daughter has been in her own bed for 2 months and counting. That was at 4 and a half that we moved to own bed.

She is still in our room, and she does still wake once a night, but I'm used to it now and talk her back to sleep. The difference is that the one time she wakes varies a lot. No longer three in the morning.

[Jesabes]

Oh dear, I don't like the sound of this. My daughter is one month shy of 3.5. (My son is 15 months and I've always considered that the worst age.)

[Julie Barnes]

I am SO glad to hear all of these comments. I thought I was all alone here in motherland. I have a 3.5 year old and a 23 month old. They both do not sleep and I hesitate to think I will ever get a full night of sleep again. Thanks for all these wonderful comments. At least I am not alone.

[ACJ]

I am SO heartened to read this. 3.75 is my least favourite age by miles, but somehow in the last 18 months I had forgotten how deeply, truly I hated it and now that it is upon us again, I'm ready to sell my son to gypsies... I'll hold on, but good f*ck is it awful. I mean the awful bits. The good parts are always heart-smile-good, but the awful. The awful makes me want to gauge my eyeballs out.

As for the sleep, we are willing to make a bed beside our bed anytime, any night. We just bring in his quilt and pillow and he can make a nest. Knowing that eventually they do go back to their own beds makes this very okay for us. Letting any child into our bed is a night wrecker though, and we're all too old for now.

Back at it...

[Bekki]

My twins are a month shy of 4, and it really is awful sometimes. We started a star chart for staying in bed + a clock that changes color when it's ok to get up.

We have three magnetic stars on a white board on their door. Every time one would get out of bed, or we had to go in, they lost a star. If they had stars left in the morning, they earned their reward. (In our case it's a treasure chest and they earn gold coins that then in turn will earn toys etc). It has been about 3 months and it actually has made quite a big difference.

[hedra]

You win the bet, Moxie - highest rate of sleeping in a parent's bed globally (any culture) is 2-4 years old. :)

[Charity]

@Bekki -- Where did you find a clock that changes color like that? I think that'd help us.

We're having a hard time at 4.5 but that's because we JUST moved her to her own bed. I'm watching the comments here in case any of you have strategies for keeping kids in bed without waking up siblings.

[Jan]

I've mentally blocked 3 1/2 but I will say that if you're going to go the clock route, putting a sticky note over the minutes on a regular digital clock works quite well.

At our house, the rule (w/the 6 and 8 year old) is generally if you need me in the night, you can come and get a hug from me, but then you generally need to head back to bed. (Real serious nighttime upset is rare. Sometimes I'll invite the nighttime visitor to crawl in so we can spoon for a bit, but squiggly behavior is usually be pretty good indication that they don't really need to be held anymore right then.) I don't even usually switch off the C-PAP, let alone get out from under the covers.

[Jill]

15-21 months was definitely worse for me than 3 1/2. So I totally agree with you Moxie!

[wealhtheow]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again! :) Our kid was doing the same thing, until we found out his adenoids were gigantic and totally causing obstructive sleep apnea. Does he snore a lot? When you sneak in at night to check on him is his head tilted all the way back? If your insurance will cover it I think it's definitely worth doing a sleep study, especially if you've tried everything else. Kids this age with sleep apnea have a tendency to wake up really scared and not know why, so the usual self-soothing tricks don't work. IF this is the case and you either get his adenoids removed or use a steroidal nasal spray to shrink them, you'll probably still have some residual sleep training to do just to break that habit of waking up and getting in with mom and dad. But I found that to be wrapped up within a few weeks.

[Erin]

When we had sleep problems with our preschooler (the troubles started at 2.5 and spilled over until almost 3.5), we got him a regular clock. He could read numbers, and we told him you can't get out of bed until the clock says SIX ZERO ZERO. And then we did that awful supernanny thing where every time he gets out of bed, you put him back in without looking. There was crying, but then it was over and he's been sleeping beautifully since.

BUT on Moxie's other point, my son was astonishing to me because he never liked to cosleep when he was a baby, but starting at the same time as the bedtime shenaningans, he started coming to sleep with me. We're on our own a lot, so our rule is when daddy's in town he can't sleep with us (daddy says big fat no to cosleeping the kicking preschooler) but when he's not, the 4 y.o. sleeps with me, and has for almost a year now. We both like it, and he doesn't seem to register any aggression at his dad for kicking him out when his dad's in town. But I figure he seems so much more emotionally fragile or vulnerable or something, and he needs the extra closeness.

[awakingsleep]

@Annika and Moxie and Jill - yes! I so agree that that time frame, especially 15-18mo, was just brutal. It's the "can do things, but have no firm grasp of immediate consequences" time. I'm so glad to hear someone else say it!

[Sarah]

Gro Clock saved my life when my daughter was this age. Best ever parenting gadget.

[ARC]

OMG I thought it was just us/new preschool/new sibling/new potty skills, but it sounds like it's a *thing* with 3 year olds.

Ours just turned 3 last month, and has been a marvelous sleeper since we brought her home (a couple of regressions that have faded into the depths of my memory now). But a couple of weeks ago, she started resisting bedtime, waking up in the middle of the night and pitching a fit to come and sleep with us, and now, not going to sleep unless someone is lying down with her.

(Her sleep issues are worse than the 1-week-old's.)

Interestingly, the few nights we let her into our bed, she climbed in and slept until 7:30 without incident, despite me getting up several times with the baby. So as soon as I'm healed up, I'm fine to let her cosleep if that "fixes" it for now.

We may also try a sticker chart as that worked brilliantly for daytime potty training (which just happened).

[Sarah W]

Ugh. My son (2 months shy of 3.5) is starting to show signs of the Worst Age Ever, AND is working hard on potty training (self-initiated, which is basically the only way to get the kid to do ANYTHING.) He has always had marked phases of disequilibrium around his half-birthdays, so I am girding myself for this one. AND, we are moving cross-country a month after he turns 3.5. Heaven. Help. Me.

On the night wakeups, though - I second (third?) the toddler clocks. We got him one for his 3rd birthday. He was still sleeping in a crib at that point, so the clock was for when he could call us in the morning. About 3 weeks after his birthday, he switched (self-initiated) to a twin bed, and we had exactly zero night wandering. He's very proud of his clock.

[Clementine]

When S was 3.5, she went from being a good sleeper to being a terrible sleeper. She'd start waking up around 9 and would not go back to sleep. Wondering if it was bad dreams, I tried staying with her or in the room. That made it worse. Because she shares a room with her twin, co-sleeping didn't seem like an option, although that's what she wanted. We tried a lot of things, including a little handheld, rechargeable nightlight that she could turn on (helped a tiny bit). Stickers (didn't work). We told her she didn't have to sleep, just that she had to stay quietly in her bed all night. The problem was, she'd get out of bed and make a lot of noise.

So, I'd wait, and as she'd get out of bed, I'd get her back in. Sometimes I'd have to put her in, but, usually I just had to point, and she'd run back. The worst was one night when she finally fell asleep for the night at 6:15 AM. As it was happening I thought that might be the last gasp of the problem, and it definitely eased up after that. It was at least month in all that was really rough.

I like the clock idea some have presented, and we may get one. The girls know their number, but they mix up 2 and 5 and sometimes mix up the order. (6:03 isn't 6:30)

[Sarah G]

Just went through this with our 3 yo (and SO not looking forward to the hell of 3.5... we will have a 4-month-old then. SUPER!!)

Here's what worked for us for the night/early morning wake-ups:
- lots of coaching about what to do when you wake up (STAY IN ROOM, play with toys in bed, read books) - nightly, before bed, reminders of what to do
- fill bed with things to do in the morning
- Changing the bedtime routine so we don't wait for her to fall asleep before leaving the room (VERY hard to break as we *I* had been doing this since 6 months!)
- sit in chair in her room instead of laying in her bed for tuck-in (ie, get her used to going to sleep alone, so waking up alone is no biggie)
- set up a 'bed' next to our bed (just a blanket & pillow on carpet). She came in for three 'mornings' (4-5 am), was allowed to sleep on the floor next to me. Sounds cruel but, after 3 days she opted to stay in her own room.

We were already keeping an insulated bottle of water in her bed but yes to that also.

[kiki]

We're having a beast of a time with settling down for the night - it's taking, on average, 1.5 hours and then 2 out of the three of us in the house end up near tears. So that's awesome. On the other hand, we were just told this morning that the kidlet needs tubes in her ears, so hopefully things will improve once she gets them.

[jennifer]

I love Moxie's idea about the water in the sippy cup.

My son (now 4) has always had trouble sleeping thru the night. When I was pregnant (starting when he was 3), I didn't really want him crawling into bed with us, but I understood that he wanted to be near us. So I took his old crib mattress and made it up next to our bed. If he got up at night, he could either go back to sleep in his bed or choose to come sleep on the crib mattress.
As always, my advice is to do whatever gets everyone some sleep. Good luck!

[julie K.]

HA. Loved seeing this today. My daughter will be 3.5 next week, and the past 3-4 weeks has been sleeping crappy, waking at night and also waking up REALLY early in the morning (like 5:40 am) and waking up her 7 year old brother who is only too happy to get up and play with her, but really needs his sleep! Older brother is crabby from less sleep and the 3.5 yo is crabby all the time too from being 3.5. I am ONLY making it thru this time because I remember the first kid also going through this at 3.5 years old. He would get out of bed in the middle of the night and come into our room and start talking about wanting to go outside, look at the stars, etc. and we are sitting up in bed going "it is the middle of the NIGHT!". sigh.

[nike norge]

The Fast Break, bygget til spillere med et hurtigt første skridt, er konstrueret med en sort og hvid læder øvre og gule accenting på kontrasten syning

[Sarah]

I'm not getting all the details of this situation, but this child sounds normal and not one that has "sleep issues." It may feel that way to the mom, though, if her friends' or relatives' kids are different. Sometimes the biggest sleep issue is the parents' exhaustion and/or frustration with the situation. It will pass.

My husband and I have found with our four-year-old nights, she needs to check in with us. Usually it's because of a bad dream or simply that she woke up and needs to be near us. She goes through periods when she does this a lot and other times when we don't hear from her all night. We believe in being available to her and have handled this in a few different ways:

1) She has crawled into bed with us. Not as much after her sister arrived a year a half ago, though, as the bed is then pretty crowded.

2) My husband takes her back to her bed and either waits until she falls back asleep or sleeps with her, depending on his preference.

3) Little sister now has her own bed in the same room, but she doesn't sleep there much yet. So my husband sometimes sleeps in that bed, and his presence in the same room helps our older daughter stay in her bed all night.

We have also experimented with a mattress on the floor in our bedroom from time to time as a place for either girl to sleep.

[Kristin]

The clock did not work to keep my son in bed in the middle of the night. It does help with the signal to get in bed at bed time though. But, he still comes and gets me when he wakes up in the middle of the night (and only me - no daddy allowed) and he just turned 4.

For probably 9 months, we would have to lay with him to get him to stay in his bed to either fall asleep initially or go back to sleep in the middle of the night, which was awful. Always ended up falling asleep over there and squeezing into a twin bed with a squirmy kid meant sleep was horrible. Graduated to sleeping on an air mattress on the floor. Ended up staying on that the whole night for a couple of months because that way he didn't wake me at least. Now, I've graduated to sitting on a chair by the door, but cannot seem to get out of that.

[Sarah G]

I knew I never should have written "what worked for us". All undone. Pregnant mommy has no backbone. Need coffee.

Carry on.

[Clubwear Manufacturer]

A thousand-li journey is started by taking the first step

[Raul]

aiyo..neo..cely is a good gal and porn is not good for her la..cely, u should say..try some caenfife drink ..anyway ..if u need to stay awake drink some coffee or eat some sweet (Hi-Sour)..it's work for me :)

[Zain]

Maybe the kitchen woidnw has better views for potential prey? Also if your cat is a tom, he may be more susceptible towards certain and strong scents. All cats scent mark as they are territorial and scent glands come from the mouth, face, paws, and also their urine. On this note, be careful as some cats pee on clothes. let's hope his roll around the dirty laundry is enough for his scentmarking purposes.

[Marieke]

that photo is gorgeous, and i love the emsroen poem. i am SO lucky to have been born across the street from the ocean. i know how spoiled this makes me, but i really really appreciate it. :)

[Rajko]

My kids’ beds are made for kids or big horse jockeys. I’m 6’4”. I’d have to use their desk as an etdenxer in a weird mix of sleeping and Planking. LOL! I wouldn't say we let our kids sleep w/ us as a reward, it's more an act of desperation for a little extra sleep. But as you pointed out, the pain often outweighs the pleasure. Sometimes I end up going to sleep in a kid's bed, and sometimes I just let my shoulder get separated in the bed. The worst is when the baby finally goes back to sleep and then his hair tickles my nose and I ruin everything by sneezing.

[neymar]

I was in this situation when Willl was about 7months old and I was the crakeinst crakeinst crakeinst! In my uni days I could go without sleep for two or three days, and then I could sleep for a day or I could go on two hours a night for a week, and then I could crash. We don't get the chance to top up the bank enough when we're mums, so I'd be jumping at that chance of some sleep too! You're a good mum for recognising that you need it, not a bad mum for wanting to escape. I hope you get some very soon. xAsh recently posted..

[Tolga]

My son slept 12 hours a night from six weeks old. Every single night.Imagine the ongnoig and incredibly rude shock to then have my daughter, who only last week (AT 20 MONTHS OLD!!!!) slept through the night for the first time. Ever.Oh, good times.Enjoy your night away. I can just imagine all your friends heading out for dinner and you hopping into the bed with an eyemask for a nap instead Jade recently posted..

[Gunaone]

Hi, I'm mum to a 4 yr old who doesn't sleep through the night, trust me when he shniutog and screaming at 2 or 3 in the morning because . wait for it his blanket isn't covering his collar bone!!! I get very cranky but it's because I'm tired not a bad parent. What I'm trying to say is being tired and cranky doesn't make you a bad parent, now go get some sleep. xxJo recently posted..

[Simar]

lack of sleep story of my life I often find myself takilng about sleep like a starving person talks about food! I just can never get enough and mostly it is my own fault. I should be taking that quick nap or going to bed earlier and letting things go more. Often I need to take regular time out' trips to my room to cope with getting through the day because when I don't have enough sleep I am one grumpy mum! I find that a mum who gets sleep is a happy mum.Naomi Ellis recently posted..

[Renata]

I'm right there with you on lack of sleep and these are great ideas will add them all to the parenting on empty' ideas I was thnoiwrg around on my blog the other day! So awesome to have so many bloggers that not only understand what it's like but who can offer practical ideas to get through katepickle recently posted..