Crowd Sourcing for Parenting Advice

Amy Cissell
March 4, 2015
Oh, Baby!
562

Look at this face. LOOK AT IT!

Does this look like the face of evil to you?

Well it is!

I am so tired, y’all. SO TIRED.

Small devil child will not sleep. He will not fall asleep and he will not stay asleep. Bedtime has devolved into a 45 minute- 1 hour period of hysteria and excuses (“I have to go potty,” “I don’t feel well,” “I need water,” “There’s something scawy”) and crying (“I cwying right now, Mommy. Look at my tears!”) until I give in and let Alvie fall asleep lying next to me on the couch (or alternatively the architect gives in and lies down next to him in his [the Bean’s] room).

That’s bad enough. Nothing makes you feel awesome like running up the stairs at periodically longer intervals to reassure your hysterical child that the smoke detector is not looking at you, and NO it didn’t beep last night, that was a couple of months ago and oh my god why don’t you, the almost three-year-old, have a better sense of the passage of time????

Ahem. Where was I?

Oh yes, bed time. We have a routine. We do not vary the routine. Everyone knows the routine. It is good.

We’ve tried stopping his Zyrtec at night, moving bedtime earlier, moving it later, and chloroform (j/k! we haven’t tried that. Yet.)

He is calm and happy until the minute we leave his room. We’ve tried soothing, rocking, singing, crying for 15 minute intervals before we go to soothe, rock, sing.

Nothing. NOTHING. Except for having the baby-sitter put him to bed. That worked like magic.

Finally, he falls asleep, sometime after 9, usually (i.e. a full 90+ minutes after we initiate bedtime).

And then? He wakes up a minimum of three times/night. He is not easily soothed back to sleep. He is not having unwaking night terrors. Generally the first two times we can get him to fall back asleep in his own bed, but the third time (between 3:30-4 am usually) nothing will convince him that it’s sleep time and he begs (“Mommy, there’s something scawy. Mommy I need you. Mommy, pwease let me sleep in the big bed with you and daddy. I need you.”) until I give in to come to our bed. Where he thrashes a bit and then falls asleep.

This is obviously not good for him. He’s not getting enough sleep. He’s terrified of going to sleep.

We’ve changed the smoke detector batteries with him, covered the blinking lights with tape (those lights are “scawy”) and talked about how smoke detectors are good and helpers and the house is not on fire, and neither is your school and we’re not going to burn up, seriously!

Do you know who else this isn’t good for?

ME!

I also need sleep. I love sleep. Sleep is my second best friend (next to books; and sometimes it is hard to be friends with both at the same time).

Also, Bean seems to have an impeccable instinct for freaking out when I am in the deepest sleep possible.

I’m sure this is also not good for the architect, but as he is (a) not here right now to ask about it and (b) not the blogger who runs this page, we’ll just pretend he likes it. JUST KIDDING! This is terrible for everyone.

So, oh wise internets, tell me how to fix this? Should I just ship him off to military preschool? Sell him to the carnival? (Give him to circus folk?)

I just want everyone to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

I feel like this today