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Several years ago, when our child was still waking up at night (two years old at the time), I went into our Doctor’s office with this complaint… “My 2-year-old is still waking up at night .” Her advice changed our nights!
I was recently talking to a friend having the same issues, so I decided that if she needed some encouragement, others might, too.
I wanted to share this with you because our son was the BEST sleeper.
He came home from the hospital and slept through the night.
At one year of age, he continued to sleep all night long. He did this until he was about two years of age and then it started. He started waking up at night, and it was happening every night. He was waking up not feeling rested… even, might I say… “Crabby”?
Once we started watching his patterns more often, we realized that it was around the same time every night. He was going to bed around 7:00 every night (6:00 if he didn’t nap at all) and waking up in the morning around 7:00 or 8:00. If he goes to bed at 6:00, he wakes up between 6:50 & 7:30 – he always gets at least 12 hours, sometimes 13, which is about what he needs.
He started waking up at midnight, too. He would wake up and cry. We would go in, cover him up and he would go back to sleep. Sometimes he wanted a drink or different pajamas (not sure about this one, he just liked to change his pajamas – haha!)
It was impacting his mornings.
He wasn’t acting like himself because he was waking up and not getting his much-needed rest. After a few weeks of this, I was exhausted (We have three other kids, and one was a baby at the time.) He was exhausted, too.
This photo was taken around that time…
I wish I could say it was a short phase, but it continued. A few months later, I was even more exhausted. When his 3-year well-check came around, this was brought up, and we received great advice!
THIS ADVICE CHANGED HIS SLEEP PATTERNS, AND HE BEGAN TO SLEEP ALL NIGHT LONG…
What you need to do:
She told us that when WE go to bed, go into his room first, hug him, kiss him, lay with them, cover him up…. all things to rouse him just a bit. Wake him just enough to break him out of his sleep a little. What this does is that it breaks up his sleep cycle. He was waking when he was switching from his REM sleep. Do not wake them up! Just make them stir a bit.
Don’t lie down with them or talk to them. Just rub their back, tuck them in, kiss them on the cheek… just enough to make them switch sleep cycles. This brings them out of their sleep slightly, which is just enough to make them fall back into a deep sleep and hopefully sleep through the night. I studied child development in college, so this makes complete sense to me once she said it.
I wish I would have thought of it sooner! It worked PERFECTLY! He no longer woke up at night and he sleeps the full night. I was so excited the first night, and I have been happy ever since! So the key is just to ‘stir him a bit’ before you go to bed. That was it for us! I hope that it works for you, too!
For more sleep tips, you are welcome to sign up here for my free email series called “Helping My Child Become a BETTER Sleeper.”
I will also send you a sample sleep schedule.
Ps- just for a little “inspiration,”… our kids are now much older, and everyone sleeps through the night… most nights. 🙂 It gets better- I promise.
These are the faces of well-rested kids. 🙂
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We’ve just started potty training our 2.5 year old. Ever since, she has been waking every night and staying awake for HOURS! We are soo exhausted I know it’s because she’s afraid of having accidents despute reassuring her numerous times and letting her wear diapers at night. So I don’t think this will work! For one, once she finally falls asleep at night we go to bed too. I also think she’s such a light sleeper that she would fully wake up and it would take another 2 hours to get her back to sleep! We are at the end of our rope. This cannot continue, but nothing is working!
Hello!
I’m curious my niece (who is 3 years old) always wakes up usually between 12-2 in the morning and turns into a stealthy ninja and crawls into my brother and sister in laws bed. At that point, my niece decides to practice yoga in her sleep (my sister in law says she usually has my nieces feet either in her face or pushed into her back). My niece has a simulated fish tank that was suppose to coax her back to sleep but I believe she’s grown out of the tank. My sister in law just put a tv in her bed only for 30 minutes after she wakes up but I don’t see that happening. Walking my niece back to bed has been an issue as she has a horrible meltdown screaming crying kicking. My opinion she is beyond spoiled but now they have a 5 month old so I’m curious what options they may have to teach her to stay in her own bed. She did have night terrors for about a month. Now it’s just clockwork for her to wake up around that time and crawl into their bed. Any ideas? Thank you
Danielle
I can’t wait to try this tonight. My son recently learned how to climb out of his crib. Every night at midnight he ends up in our bed and then screams bloody murder when we put him back in his. We don’t want him sleeping in our bed. I really hope this works.
Thank you thank you thank you!!!
Seriously. Thank you. My son is six years old. My husband and I CANNOT remember the last time he slept in his room through the night. Every night he visits and stays with us around midnight. I tried this for the first time last night and much to my surprise, it worked! He slept until 7:25. Fingers crossed it continues to work, I just did it again. I do have one question though;
How long do we continue to rouse him before the old pattern of waking is broken? How long did you continue to rouse him?
Oh yay!! We did it for a few weeks… but honestly we still do it most nights just because I give them all a kiss on the cheek before we go to bed & that’s just enough to stir them… 🙂 LOL.
Interesting article. Our kids’ nights were harder when they were babies and then getting better. But I somehow just DID the tip anyway. My advice: do t get the Lilly (whatever it is) product. It’s one of the best moments of my day to tuck my two boys in again, give them a gentle kiss, stroke their cheek or say a prayer over them before I go to sleep. Even if they are typical rowdy boys during the day they look like angels when they sleep. And it always reminds me how quickly they grow up!!
Is there an alternative to this Lully device. I was a little excited about buying it this morning until I saw that it was $200! My son started waking up once a night, maybe after 6-7 hours of sleep. Then he stays up for about an hour or 2. Then he goes back to sleep and wakes up several hours later. He gets about 10-12 hours of sleep in total, but I don’t like that lonnnnngg interruption in the middle of the middle because it makes me tired. Any alternative devices out there just in case I can’t stir him in the middle of the night?
None that I know of, but I’ll keep you posted.:)
Hi Becky.
I have a problem like you. My son wake up 2 time a night. I really worry about it. I will bring him to meet doctor. Thanks for your post.
Good luck!!
My 2.5 year old wakes up 2-3 times at night calling us in to put her blanket back on her or wants us to sleep in the room with her. I am soo sleep deprived….its hard to function because once she wakes me up its hard to fall back asleep. Ever since we switched her from a sleep sack to a blanket she’s been calling us to tuck her back in every night. Another thing to add to her sleep interruptions were her fevers. In order to monitor her fever we would sleep in her room on a futon while she slept in her crib. Throughout the night if she woke up crying with a high fever we’d give her medicine and sometimes it would take an hour for her to fall back asleep. So the combination of the habit of waking up because of her fever and not having a blanket to cover her she would wake up at around 1am every night and sometimes more than once. She also would wake up crying because she seemed scared of something. She’d look for us when she wakes up and if we aren’t there then she’d cry until we slept on the futon next to her. Another thing is getting her to sleep in the beginning of the night can be so difficult some nights. She would want water, or her blanket to cover her, or a tissue, or throw her stuff animal out of the crib just so we can come in to pick it up for her. She use to be the best sleeper, would cry a bit at night but would drift back to sleep on her own. But now she’s changed and we don’t know what to do.
I’ve just read two articles from you and it’s my first time coming across your site. I really agree with your opinions that I’ve read, and will definitely be reading more. I just have to say, I scrolled to the bottom and saw the picture of your family, it’s so perfectly beautiful! You must have a very fill heart! 🙂
Thank you. 🙂 That’s so sweet!
I’m terrified to try this with our 2 year old. Takes almost 2 hours every night to get her to sleep. If I went into her room to stir her even a bit she’d snap out of her sleep completely and it’d be back to square one getting her back to sleep.
For the first 15.5 months of my twins lives, at least one of them had awful sleep. It got to the point where she would wake up every 15-30 minutes to just make sure I’m there and wake me up every time (we were sleeping on the floor at this point). I had tried everything with her. So we did the CIO 1-3-5-7 method where you wait 1 minute, go in say you are ok, hug/kiss then 3 minutes, etc. We only ever got up to 15 minutes and it only lasted 3 nights. Hard but had to be done for all of our mental health. Now they are 2.5 years old. Slept great until sometime in January when the best sleeper decided she would scream at bedtime and then cry on and off all night. The poor sleeper that we did CIO with, didn’t know what was going on. So we tried taking her to the living room floor, putting her in a pack n play which she climbed out of, tried the gentle removal method where we lay by her crib, then slowly move away every 2-3 nights, to finally having enough and threatening to not tuck them in if they don’t lay down. By the last part, the bad sleeper had become a bad sleeper again. We are now able to get them to lay down (with crying) at night and go to sleep but then they wake up 5-10 times a night to the point where they are up when we get up for work (4am, their bedtime is 730pm) and then huge tears, etc when the sitter shows up for us to leave (we work 4 10 hour days). We are exhausted. This is week 4. Don’t know what else to do. Someone said to put a child knob on the inside of their room, flip their beds to toddler beds and just let them scream and cry (and maybe vomit) until they pass out and eventually they will learn their room is for sleeping. But won’t this teach them to hate their room? That’s why I don’t want to do it. We are at a loss. its disheartening that we fixed it after 15.5 months and now its reared its ugly head again. If anyone is out there that can help, please do. They don’t just wake up once…its multiple times all night long. We have tried a night light, noise, fans, humidifier, even laying with them on the living room floor doesn’t work cause they still wake up. How do we stop that? I just want my sleep back and my time with the hubs to unwind…we miss each other. Parents in Tears!
My husband and I are going through the night terror at this moment! My hubby has been walking around with our son in his arm, cuddling with him, opening the window, closing it again and going in and out of my son’s room in the past hour. And he is still crying. So I was desperately searching something to stop this issue and found your blog!!
We recently moved to a new house and we put our son in a preschool right after that. Since then our nights have been HORRIFYING. Our son has never been a good sleeper but now he wakes up like 5 times a night!! We actually hired a sleep trainer a few months ago but he got sick and we had to wait until there was no sign of running nose and coughs. But then he got sick again, and again (this past winter was horrible). So we couldn’t get to the training for 2 full months, then the move happened, then the preschool.
He just turned 2 years old and our night terrors have never been worse. So I absolutely had no hesitation on spending $200 for the little gadget from Lully!!! The sleep trainer have told us we can’t start the training unless he is in the best shape physically and mentally. So we were feeling so lost since he was going through such a tough time with the new environment (house & school), which means the training wouldn’t be happening for at least the next few weeks.
Thank you so much, Becky!! You absolutely shedded some light on our dark nights!! Can’t wait to use Lully!!!!
Oh yay! I’m so glad that it helped 🙂
Very interesting! I shall try! My son is 22 months old. He NEVER slept through the night. Maybe 10x in his whole entire life. That is literally all! Hes never been a good sleeper. I’ve never been well rested since he was born. And now I’m 2 months pregnant 😭 my poor husband and I were saying how burned out we feel and how we have no idea how we will get through this with another baby on the way. After almost 2 years of waking up multiple times at night, and around 12 months he woke about 6x a night to nurse, and now maybe wakes 3x a night at almost 2 we are just done. I really hope this works
You poor, sleepy mama! I hope your little one’s sleep gets better soon so you can all catch up on some zzz’s before the new addition to your family arrives <3
There could be many reasons why babies cry at night. Here are some most common reasons:
– The baby’s diaper is dirty or wet and the only way they can tell you to change it is by crying.
– The baby must be hungry and wants to be fed.
– The temperature of the room must be making the baby uncomfortable to sleep.
– The baby is looking for some love and cuddling or just wants to feel secure.
– Even babies are said to get nightmares in their sleep just like sleep which can make them cry.
There could be medical reasons such as teething which could be making the baby cry and it is best to consult a pediatrician during such cases.
This post saved my nights! How long do you have to go in and rouse them from sleep for?
Yay! I didn’t have to do it very long. About a week or two, I think.