For the past several weeks Jessica has seemed to have more difficult time sleeping especially at nap times. She is 2 years and almost 3 months now as of July 8, 2018. I had been wanting to write a blog and make a video about how we sleep trained for a long time. It just never seemed we had got a handle on it so I didn’t do it until now.
I guess its possible she was having a 2-year-old sleep regression and maybe that was what it was but we’ve had sleep issues since she was very young. She was never on any kind of a good schedule till she was about 9 months and even then, it was difficult. We used the extinction method that Dr. Marc Weissbluth author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child,: A Step-by-Step Program for a Good Night’s Sleep. He explains the importance of getting sleep habits figured out as early as possible as difficulty with sleep can persist into adolescence and cause all kinds of problems with hyperactivity and focusing in school.
He goes into a lot of detail in this book with many research studies. I could relate the most to the chapter on extreme fussiness/colic and temperament. He explains the statistics involved with the age of the baby and if they still have sleep issues and if they will become a happy or difficult or even intermediate temperament. There is discussion about how there could be an imbalance of serotonin and melatonin as features of these colic babies.
The problem for us has been the inability to allow Jess to cry when she has been sick. I have done my best to allow her to cry when she is sick as long as she is not too congested as crying will only make that congestion worse and I was trying to avoid antibiotics and longer sick time. I have many times held her for her nap because she wakes in the middle of the nap often to this day.
I wonder if she just has a difficult temperament which could alone cause sleep problems. Jessica was not one to respond well to me going in to comfort her and reassure her for a few nights as she learned to put herself to sleep with a little fussing. She would scream bloody murder on either side of her nap going down or waking up too early. She did scream for two hours one night when we were sleep training her at six months of age.
All the crying and screaming takes its toll on me emotionally and physically with the lack of sleep that we get in this house. The lack of sleep has had me on the edge meaning I would yell at Jessica more and caused more disruption in our family life in general.
I purchased a program called Sleep Sense by Dana Obelman online several months ago at the beginning of 2018 because they have an 800 number you can utilize for questions. I have called about 3x now and the last time helped so much. The gal on the phone said I had to put Jess to bed earlier around 7-7:30 or so not later so that she would stop waking up too early. She was waking at 5:30. I was letting her cry to see if she would go back to sleep because she would at times sleep till 7 or even 8 am. If she got up too early she would be miserable all day and be extremely clingy not allowing me to get anything done at home sometimes.
Dr. Weissbluth goes into a lot of detail about sleep in his book. There is simply too much to list here in this blog. One thing he says about these colicky babies that gives me hope is this, “Some postcolic kids have boundless energy…It’s as if they have a heightened level of arousal, activity, and curiosity. When overtired, they are always crabby and socially demanding, needing mommy’s presence and wanting to be held all the time. They also are quick to fuss when mom leaves the room for only a minute. But when they are well rested, it’s a different story. When they’ve had enough sleep, these same babies appear to have boundless curiosity, actively seeking opportunities to learn. Maybe these are very intelligent children who are so alert, curious, and bright that they have difficulty controlling their impulses to explore or investigate the world.”
The bottom line is if you have sleep issues its crucial to find answers and get help and get good sleep habits going on because sleep problems can continue into adolescence and adulthood.