Baby internal sleep clock

[aggiecyd]

Yes, I know babies don't sleep well. But I'm having problems establishing any kind of routine with DS.
DD settled into her own pattern pretty easily, with 2 1-hour naps and she was always asleep by 7 pm. DS, on the other hand, is opposite. He WILL NOT go to sleep before 11 pm, no matter what. And I have to fight him to nap (and put him down, off of me to sleep).
He's had had a lot of early development that could be interfering, I guess. He rolled over & got his first teeth at 2 months, crawled at 4 months, pulled up at 5 months, was cruising by 7 months and now at 8 months has taken a few unassisted steps. He has 7 teeth total and is cutting 2 more now. He usually wakes up if he's transferred off of me to sleep. I'm EBF and he wakes to eat - he's a big boy at 22 lbs. We're tired.
He doesn't go down until around midnight, DD is up at 6:30 am and I'm going back to work temporarily on Monday. I need this child to go to sleep earlier. Just this week, I've been able to get him to nap at 10 am in his swing. He wants an afternoon nap around 3, fights it and ends up asleep around 8-9pm, but then he's awake at 10 & ready to go. Dark room, rocking, nursing, swing...nothing helps. We had a routine with both kids of bath, story & snuggle but that seems to really stimulate him. He goes crazy for water & rolling around on DDs bed. He's never still and at 10 pm, is just UP. We've been rocking in the dark for an hour now & he's just laughing at the dog. He squirms & screams if he can't move & isn't ready to sleep.
Is there anything I can do to change his internal clock at this age? I'm not into CIO.

[chatterbox]

I also have a very active 8 month old with a lot of early development (minus the teeth!) The only thing that worked for us is The Sleep Easy Solution, but it's a CIO method. Have you tried waking him up in the morning to start his day when his sister does?

[aggiecyd]

Mar 12, 2015 23:38:22 GMT -5 chatterbox said:

I also have a very active 8 month old with a lot of early development (minus the teeth!) The only thing that worked for us is The Sleep Easy Solution, but it's a CIO method. Have you tried waking him up in the morning to start his day when his sister does?

I have tried waking him earlier & it doesn't end well. We did that for about a week, trying to get him to sleep earlier. He ends up crying unless I'm holding him and walking around. It's just not feasible for me to carry him for 3 hours, not being able to sit without him screaming, so he sleeps in.
ETA - waking him earlier changed nothing about his bedtime. He whined/cried all morning, cat-napped throughout the day & was still ready to go at 10 pm.
I will say, if I can get him down after DD is in bed he wakes up when DH gets home so maybe I'll try a quieter spot.

[expectantsteelerfan]

You probably have, but in case not, have you tried white noise and blackout curtains? Like pp, I'd establish that bedtime is bedtime, and if they wake after that, they don't get out of their room or taken anywhere where there is light. I'd start just sitting silently in the room with them, or hold and soothe if needed, but no talking/playing/interacting, for as long as it took for them to go back to sleep if you are really against CIO.

[aggiecyd]

He is still in our room, and will be for a few more weeks. We have blackout curtains & a fan, and a consistent routine, it's just not the best one. My fault. Our upstairs is small & DD likes to talk & sing in her room before she goes to sleep, so I take DS back downstairs to nurse. He falls asleep, but wakes when DH gets home, around 8:30. So that's probably not the best place for us, right? It came about naturally since DD was keeping him awake & we were fighting him on sleep anyway we wanted him away from DD.
I'll change things up & keep him upstairs. Maybe after a few nights he'll realize it's time for sleep. Thank you for the suggestions/reality check.

[Deleted]

My ds was a craptastic sleeper too...I won't tell you how long it took him to sttn...and that was with some CIO (he literally could not put himself to sleep with out BF...so anytime he woke, he needed to nurse)...rambling to say: you have my empathy. Sleep deprivation is truly a form of torture. Hugs.

And I think keeping him upstairs is a great idea...hopefully that will help quell the 8:30-11 playtime. Good luck!

[Deleted]

Just wanted to chime in with my sorries, too! It does seem like some babies truly hate sleep. My daughter is 1 and we're still struggling with no routine, and a baby who loves to get up and play at ungodly hours. I'm sorry, it sucks! I feel guilty about CIO, but if it gets to the point where you're just not getting enough sleep to function, it might be worth a try. We did Ferber's method with our DD and it helped a lot - from 5 wake-ups to 1 or 2.

I also had two kids who hated bedtime routines - that really makes it tough, doesn't it! Any kind of "sleep cues" made my kids riled up to resist sleep! So, I'm useless for advice, just wanted to say I hear ya. And if it gets too awful, don't feel bad about needing to use CIO.

[quesyrah]

Mar 13, 2015 20:52:09 GMT -5 aggiecyd said:

He is still in our room, and will be for a few more weeks. We have blackout curtains & a fan, and a consistent routine, it's just not the best one. My fault. Our upstairs is small & DD likes to talk & sing in her room before she goes to sleep, so I take DS back downstairs to nurse. He falls asleep, but wakes when DH gets home, around 8:30. So that's probably not the best place for us, right? It came about naturally since DD was keeping him awake & we were fighting him on sleep anyway we wanted him away from DD.
I'll change things up & keep him upstairs. Maybe after a few nights he'll realize it's time for sleep. Thank you for the suggestions/reality check.

My kids share a room. DS (5) gets to take 2 books to bed and read until he falls asleep. I used to rock DD (20 mos) to sleep and then lay her down asleep until that quit working. Then trying to put them down together was a disaster.

So since DS reads for a good 20 minutes before he falls asleep I changed our bedtime routine so that it works for both of them. We now do stories on the couch and then DD goes to bed. DS gets to read on the couch for 20 minutes by which point DD is asleep and he goes to bed. They still end up falling asleep about the same time they used to.

I know yours don't share a room but maybe having DD go up to bed a little later would help DS. I also agree with not taking him out of his room when he wakes at night. I also would work on his nap schedule. 3 PM is really late for a nap