toddler sleep

All we want is a Silent Night… 😴💙😇

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I have sung the carol to Josh on many the occasion this month but he doesn’t quite seem to get the concept. Josh’s sleep pattern has always aired on the bad side but coming up to Max arriving and just after it really peaked, which was to be expected I suppose.

Moving him into his cot bed was what exacerbated the whole thing but he is a big boy and the cot was no longer suitable for him. People say he doesn’t like his bed but I just think he doesn’t love sleep-unlike his mama! I ain’t going to spend mad money on a new bed to end up with the same result that’s for sure.. 

He is a light sleeper and we have played our part in creating bad habits for him. Staying in the room until he dropped off, lying with him when he wakes, reading him a riduculous amount of stories but we also have always had a routine with him too. It’s been tweaked over the years but the basics are there.. Bath, Dora cartoon on our bed with milk, story in our bed then his then time for sleep-in theory. 


In practice this hasn’t always worked. There have been overtired nights, there has been the odd refusal of a bath, there has been quite a few nights of sitting in with him until he drops off and this peaked just before Max’s arrival. 

It was then we call Niamh, a sleep coach from The Nursery. 

We toyed with the idea many times but with another on the way this gave us the push we needed. It’s all common sense stuff, stuff you have semi implemented but some of her suggestions were great but Max arrived the very next day and clocks changed the week after so the plans got put on hold and we just rolled with the punches for those first few weeks. He’s an earlier riser so whilst she would normally recommend dropping the nap she suggested just reducing it so we have done that. My advise here is if you have sleep issues don’t let it drag on as long as we did-contact Niamh or at the very least read her book to get some practical tips! 

#joking 😝

It sure is a killer when you are doing night feeds too and just as you drop off the toddler wakes, my husband is great at sharing this load but you still wake and at times I don’t drop back off as quickly… We will implement a few more of Niamh’s plans in the New Year when we are also settling Max into some sort of routine and here’s hoping 2017 is the year of sleep! Meanwhile this will be me this Christmas…

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The infamous chair! 

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I think everyone will have heard me say and is probably sick of the tales of Josh’s poor sleeping patterns… It’s not for the want of trying. We have an established routine and have had for a couple of years now albeit with a few tweaks here and there.

This and his eating habits at home are his Achilles heel. The eating thing we can probably take a bit of blame for to be honest. The sleep thing wares you down. 32 months in and I don’t think we have ever had a full week of even 7-6. He has always been an early riser but we have come to accept that, it’s when wake up is before 6 that it is more of an issue.. He wakes during the night too sometimes briefly, sometimes for longer periods of time. We had pondered a sleep trainer several times but then would get an ‘OK’ week and put it off.  You expect it from a newborn but at nearly 3 it gets a little tedious.


These last few weeks have been particularly bad, probably since the dodie has gone. My husband who did for a time primarily put him down was reading him up to 8 booked a night!!!! He would then sit on ‘the chair’ until he dropped off. This formed bad habits.. The request for sitting on the chair became commonplace. I got it down to 3 books and would sit briefly on the chair but this was with a lot of tears and calling out. We persevered and most nights then he would drop off, even if it was a long process. Then one night after a week of 5am starts and frequent night waking we had ‘the apocalypse’. He was demented, the requests to sit on ‘the chair’ hit fever pitch. We never really get angry at him but we were at the end of our tether. It was decided it was time to say goodbye to ‘the chair’ and so it got removed from what had been its resting place since before he was born.. Then came requests to sit of the floor-he’s a smart cookie-he knows there is more than 1 way to skin a cat 😉. I’m kind of laughing now but 25 weeks pregnant, Ian early rising and unusually bad behaviour from Josh probably due to overtiredness had us withered. Thankfully ‘ga ga’ took him for a couple of hours on Saturday and plans went awry and we slept solidly to catch up. 


We have now introduced a sleep chart with ‘prizes’ at the end of every week.. We can live in sleep deprived hope that this might crack the bad habits and if we get back to 8-6 we are happy and less exhausted to boot!