An Update on Sleep (at 23 months)

Last time I talked about sleep, I shared our success story of how we got Noah to sleep in his own bed and often through the night at 13 months. It all sounds fantastic after reading it again, but the truth is, that wasn’t the end of the story. I don’t remember exactly when or how it happened, but after a while Noah would not go back to his own bed after we had put him to sleep in ours. It must have been a gradual process where we either didn’t take him to his bed right away after he fell asleep or where during nights he woke up so many times we would just decide to let him stay with us. Just for that one night. Yeah right. By that time he was a better sleeper and didn’t kick or punch us all night long so it wasn’t so bad and for a while we didn’t make any serious attempts to change anything. 

hanging out in mommy and daddy's bed

We still had our moments though where we would try a new strategy without being too committed. Yes, we wanted him out of our bed again eventually, but it wasn’t the top priority either. Part of the problem was that sleeping in his crib didn’t work, because he wiggles around so much that he kept hitting himself on the bed which would wake him up. So one day we disassembled the crib and put his mattress right on the floor. This also allowed us to do our bedtime routine - which includes cuddling until he falls asleep - in his room instead of in our bed. We made sure he was involved in the process of setting up his “new” bed and acted like it was a big moment where he went from his baby bed to a big boy bed. I had even purchased new sheets and blankets. 

afternoon nap on the crib mattress

reading stories with mommy

This set up worked for a little while, but not for very long. The mattress was too small for a wiggly worm so instead of hitting his head he would now fall out of bed on occasion (even with a pillow stuffed under the sheet; he would roll right over it). Since we just had the mattress and some padding on the floor, it wasn’t so bad that he could hurt himself, but it would wake him up. And the one thing Tony and I were not committed to is getting up a few times at night to put him back to sleep in his own bed. It was simply too exhausting, so we often ended up bringing him back to bed with us. On top of it, it had always been easier to get him to fall asleep in our bed and after a long day at work I would usually just fall asleep with him anyway. So before we knew it, we were back to old patterns where Noah would fall asleep in our bed and stay there all night. We weren’t thrilled, but not too worried. Until we found out that by fall, Noah’s baby sister would be joining our family... That’s when we decided we needed to make some progress in the sleep department before the new baby arrived. 

So sometime in April we bought Noah a bigger mattress. From all of our other attempts it had been clear that his crib mattress was just too small for two reasons: Noah needed more room to toss and turn at night, and we needed to fit on it too so we could comfortably snuggle in his bed until he would fall asleep. Again, we made a big deal out of it, rearranging his room, involving him in the process, and setting up his books and music on a night stand. We also decided again what our bedtime routine would look like and established some ground rules. Cuddling is allowed, even sleeping in his bed, but Noah would have to fall asleep in his bed and we wouldn’t bring him back to our room should he wake up. And wow, were we surprised. This new set up worked like a charm. What made me especially happy is that Noah seemed so ready for it. It felt again like we had done it right and waited for the right moment. It feels good that there wasn’t a lot of struggle involved and that my instincts that he just hadn’t been ready to be separated from us at night seemed to have been spot on. He fell in love with his new bed and we quickly settled into a good new bedtime routine. 

our current set up

Over two months later, things are still going well. It’s not all perfect and not all nights are good (in fact, he still hasn’t slept through the night on more than a handful of occasions), but we’re all a lot happier at night. When he does wake up crying he is more and more often able to fall back asleep on his own, but most of the time he needs one of us to come to his room, hand him his cup of water, and lay down with him for a few minutes (it’s so adorable when he says “Mami kuscheln”/ “daddy cuddle” still half asleep). Quite often we’ll fall asleep with him too and spend an hour or so in his bed, but now that he has a bigger bed that’s not so bad. Other times he just wakes up and happily walks over to our room. My rule is – if it’s before 4am I take him back to his bed (thankfully he never protests), but if it’s after 4am (aka my alarm will go off within less than one hour) I let him climb into bed with us. I love that it makes him happy and I enjoy the snuggling before I have to get up. On top of it, I love seeing my boys sleep next to each other when I sneak out. I was worried for a while that that would make us fall back into old patterns of all three of us sleeping in the same bed, but since Noah is fine with it either way and never complains when we take him back to his room this solution has been working really well. 

Now we’ll just have to figure out how to move his bedtime back to a normal time. Since it’s been so hot and it doesn’t get dark until late, we haven’t been able to get him to go to sleep before 9-9:30pm. We’ve given up trying for now. Notice a pattern here? Yes, we are experts at taking the easy way out, but I’d rather have him play happily on his own or have him run around us than spending 2 hours on a bed time routine when he’s just not ready to go to sleep even if that means Tony and I rarely get any alone time anymore and it’s a struggle every morning to wake him up. But we’ll wait and see. This too must just be a phase. Right?