Sleepless Nights Again?
Posted on November 24, 2009 - Filed Under Kids, Mom Stuff | 9 Comments
For years, I wondered if we would ever have kids that slept through the night. My friends would tell me tales of how their babies snored the whole night away while just tiny. Even my MOM said I’d slept the night by the time I was a few months old. Everyone assured me that it wouldn’t last forever, even if it felt like it at the time.
While we’ve only actually had restful nights for the past 6-9 months, it feels like those baby days are long gone. Until now.
No, I’m not having a baby. Dante has suddenly started getting up at all hours of the night. He wakes me up, then screams because he wants his papa, which wakes Dorian up, and as a result, no one is getting a good night’s sleep. I’m not talking once or twice, either, this goes on ALL NIGHT LONG! We’ve had four nights now of nonstop up and down.
For the most part, I don’t mind too much until about 1 am, when I hit the hay. But I get pretty darn grumpy if I’m woken up every 30 min. for no particular reason apart from being yelled at. Of course, we TRY to calm the kid down before he wakes up Dorian, but there doesn’t really seem to be any particular reason. I even checked his mouth to see if he’s getting more teeth, but no. There’s no sign of bug bites, which used to wake him up and he has a bottle with water, so he’s not thirsty. And at that hour, he’s pretty much incoherent.
I would think that these are nightmare issues, but Dante doesn’t wake up scared like sometimes, he wakes up MAD. Furious, even, so maybe he is dreaming, but I’m not sure why he would be so mad all night long. He hurls his bottle of water, he throws his blankets, he kicks me in the stomach . . . only his papa can calm him down and as you know if you read my blog, his papa has been working prety much every night.
Last night, Irving was here, but he hadn’t slept much in 3 days, so he slept through most of the ruckus. Until about 4 am when I was sick of being pummeled by tiny rockhard fists and trying to reason with a child who was still half asleep and booted my poor man out of bed to deal with his son. He came back a few minutes later. “Nothing’s wrong with him, why’s he up?” 
This went on until 5:30 am, when finally, Irving had enough. Dorian was up for good by that time, but quietly watching tele and so the littlest guy in the family got a spanking. And promptly went to sleep. And slept until 8 am. Why? I have no idea. The rest of us were up by then, and Dorian had a two hour nap (unheard of for him!) on the couch in the afternoon while I crashed for a few minutes myself and Dante is still bopping around! We’ve decided to try skipping the daytime naps for a while to see if he will sleep better.
Like this, but at 3 am.
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9 Responses to “Sleepless Nights Again?”
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I found that spanking a small child worked well, I had few problems after they reached the age of 3 but we did go round and round a bit when they were small. Some of it was the effect on the older kids seeing the baby get a spanking, none of them remember getting spanked but all but the youngest remember seeing their siblings getting spanked.
You are too patient! I would´ve spanked my child the third time he woke me up. I bet it´s some kind of sleep walking mixed in with nightmares. No naps for the little one, no sugar after 5 PM, and maybe try some te de tilo before going to bed to calm him down. Also, maybe a warm shower before going to bed would help.
Good luck!!
When my guys were younger and all of a sudden there was a dramatic change in sleep behavior, I would be confused as to the cause, until a couple of days later when they would start showing signs of being sick. Either ear infection, a bad cold, touch of the flu or something along those lines. I never learned to read the signs; bad night sleeping + 3 days= sick child. Here’s to hoping that is not the case with your little guy. I like the te de tilo idea with a warm bath before bed. Good luck!
Try reading up on “night terrors”, they are similar to nightmares and are some what common in boys 2-5 years old. One of my boys had some problems with these. Hope this problem passes quickly!
Great tips, Cristina, thanks! I’ll get some tea. He usually doesn’t have sugar anyway in the afternoon. We’re trying to balance the nap thing . . . he’s a holy terror without one, so what we are trying is just letting him nap for 30-45 min. and then sending Dorian in to wake him up (he reacts much better to his brother waking him up to play than one of us).
I’ll do that, Deb, thanks. What’s puzzling me is the fact that he’s angry when he wakes up, not scared. It’s a little odd. Though I know Dorian has had dreams where Irving or I are the bad guys and he refuses to have anything to do with that parent for a while after waking up . . . maybe this is similar.
You have a good point, Suzanne! Often the kids do end up sick afterwards, or they are getting a tooth or are in pain of some sort. I actually gave him some Tylenol the other night to see if it was a pain thing, but it didn’t seem to help. Last night, he slept fairly well, so I’m hoping the stage is coming to an end. He was only up three times instead of every half hour!
I think night terrors are a possibility even though he seems angry, not scared. While I think this manifests most frequently as a terror it is really a form or incomplete arousal–the mind wakes up partly but not fully. Behavior can be somewhat variable–and seems HIGHLY disturbing to those of us who witness it.
OTOH, I don’t think in a typical night terror they are so repeated. Once my child had two in one night but only ever once. To have repeated awakenings seems a bit like a different animal.
Does he seem to have them more frequently when he has not had a good daytime nap? In fact with these parasomnias like night terrors sleep begets sleep. Many small kids have sleep issues *more frequently* at night when they don’t have a good daytime nap. This was my experience.
Does he ever seem fully awake/ himself?
Does he remember the event(s) in the morning?
Does he seem a little incoherent?
(By the way the wikipedia article on night terrors is poor, for a basic overview read the Mayo clinic site.)
Kathy, whatever it was seems to have mostly stopped, it was about a week where he was freaking out. He was still half asleep, though. He would nap really well, I think because he was sleeping so badly at night, but when we didn’t let him nap, he slept a little better at night, waking only half the number of times. He’s at an age where it’s hard to tell if he remembers stuff like that, but he would be fairly understandable . . . he would scream “No, Mama! I want Papa!” and then when Irving came in he would yell at him, too. However, he also sleepwalks and talks in his sleep quite clearly, so it’s possible he was still mostly asleep. I would try to wake him up completely in case it was a bad dream and when he calmed a bit, I would cuddle him and put him back down. Right now he’s only doing this maybe once a week. It does sound a bit like night terrors now that I’ve read up a bit on them. It was just weird though!