Over the past week Patches bedtime has gone screwy. It has been kind of wonky for most of December, but since school got out for Christmas he’s been not-sleeping at some really unexpected times. For example on Saturday night he didn’t go to sleep until about 9:30, kind of late. Then Sunday he skipped his nap and was exhausted, but I was unable to get him to sleep until nearly 11 pm. Monday he napped just fine in his crib, but refused to go to sleep there at bedtime. I ended up standing and jouncing him to sleep at 9:15. Determined to put an end to sporadic bedtimes, last night I put him to bed promptly at 7:30. He played happily in his crib until 9 when I had to put Link to bed, then he cried so I got him up to allow Link to fall asleep.
Not knowing what to expect at bedtime drives me batty. I NEED time off from the kids in the evenings. So once again I’m falling back on my old standby of charting sleep behaviors. It’s a trick I learned from the book How To Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems by Richard M Ferber. Basically I create a graph which is 24 squares wide and about 14 squares high. Each line 24 squares across represents the hours of a day. As each day passes I color in the squares according to whether the child was awake or asleep. Red for awake. Blue for asleep. After a few days I can usually see patterns emerging. Once I know what the schedule is, I can adjust it.
In this case I suspect that Patches’ sleep schedule has shifted. He doesn’t get sleepy and ready for bed until sometime after 9 pm. If I try to put him to bed earlier than that he’ll be unable to fall asleep and will rebel at being stuck in his crib. The evenings he stayed up way late were nights where I attempted to put him to bed and met with rebellion and then gave up. So what I need to do now is gradually sneak his bedtime forward. Tonight I’ll try putting him down at 9. If it works, then I’ll do it tomorrow too. The day after I’ll put him down at 8:45. So slowly day by day I sneak his bedtime to where I want it at 7:30. It may mean that his naptime needs to move earlier or be shortened or even that he is getting up earlier in the morning, but I’ll trade that for calmer bedtimes.
sleep charts! I read about them in The No-cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley (good book) but haven’t REALLY needed to use them yet… my husband puts the little girl to bed (because she’ll let him, and with me she usually insists on nursing) and that gives me the much needed alone time, because I can usually get the baby to sleep then too… good luck getting his schedule back; I know how much that time sans kids helps MY sanity!