Parental despair

It must have been some kind of positive delusion, but for a while there I felt like Isaac had been sleeping well for ages -- it seemed a long time ago that he woke up every night, and even longer since we struggled to get him to fall asleep at night. (Recent travel travails not withstanding.)

When I looked back at the blog, however, it turns out it was just two months ago that he began sleeping through most nights, and just four months ago that he started learning how to fall asleep in his own bed. So it hadn't been that long, after all. And it's a little sad that I so readily adapted to his improved sleep habits, because they have turned out to be short-lived.

Earlier this month I posted about Isaac's sleep troubles, but that was only three nights of garden-variety night-waking, perhaps caused by nightmares, easily resolved by 2o minutes of cuddles and a cup of milk. This is something worse.

His sleep chart tells a lot of the story. One day he woke up at 5:53 a.m. (after sleeping less than nine hours) and refused to fall asleep early that night (we tried for 40 minutes), finally dropping off at 8:50 p.m. Then the next day he woke up at 5:45 a.m. (again sleeping less than nine hours) and didn't go to sleep until 9:12 p.m. -- plus he woke up at 2:45 a.m. and was awake for about an hour and 15 minutes, on and off until 4:55 a.m. And did he want to go to bed early the following evening? Nope -- although we started trying to put him down at 9:05 p.m., he didn't fall asleep until 10:53 p.m., after an hour and 45 minutes of parental despair. (At one point he was so wound up and miserable that I actually turned on the lights and let him look at a book until he calmed down.)

Tonight doesn't look that bad on paper -- only 24 minutes spent transitioning into sleep, with a reasonable bedtime of 9:15 p.m. -- but it contained all the disturbing elements of the previous three nights:

1) sleep resistance: instead of asking to go to bed, as he used to do when he got tired, he instead asks to read more books, to sing a song, to sing a different song, etc.

2) climbing out of bed: instead of lying in bed peacefully for the five to 15 minutes that it used to take him to fall asleep, he gets out of bed and asks for the items listed in #1

3) wild ideas: instead of things proceeding according to our fixed bedtime routine, he wants to do things differently, like lying on the floor instead of the bed, or asking for his father instead of me, or even little things like asking to be sung to once he's lying down

I have to say that #2 is the element that scares me the most. He used to want to stay in bed, and now he doesn't. If he lies in bed for long enough, he'll fall asleep, but it turns out the process is completely dependent upon his cooperation.

So, how do I get him to stay in bed? I tried threats ("If you don't get back in bed, Mama will have to leave the room") and bribes ("If you stay in bed, Mama will sing to you"), but neither one worked.