Suggestions on sleeping

[bigbear11]

We have created some bad habits with TRex, I know that. We had so much trouble getting her eating and sleeping when we brought her home that sometimes we took the easy way. One we have always struggled with is her sleep. She has always fought going to sleep and/or taking a nap. She wakes often and has trouble going back to sleep. Don't know if she really can't or it is just a habit... probably the latter.

So one of us ends up sleeping with her when she wakes during the night. She goes thru cycles where she will want me and then months where she will want her Dad. It has just been easier to lay down with her than keep going up to calm her down and not get any sleep of our own. However, neither of us sleep well with her (tossing and turning) so we are trying to break the habit. With her it seem to work better to just go cold turkey. We have talked with her about growing up and that we aren't mad and love her but she needs to learn to sleep by herself. So we are not going up. She has taken to sleeping on the couch downstairs. We don't care where she sleeps so long as she sleeps and we get our share. She ends up going to sleep about 8:30 or 9:00 but has been waking around 3 or 4. She can't go back to sleep and plays quitely until we get up. So she is tired and as usual our timing for all this is impecable... she starts school tomorrow.

She takes 2 Kapvay (XR clonidine) and 3mg Melatonin to help her wind down but still wakes. Any suggestions on how to break this habit yet ease the transition for her? Thanks.

 

[TeDo]

You might want to consider a sleep study to find out why she's waking in the middle of the night in the first place. You need to fix the why before you worry about the how. Her waking is the problem, not where she sleeps or who sleeps with her. You might also want to ask the psychiatrist about something to help her sleep until she is able to on her own. We tried melatonin and while it helped difficult child 1 get to sleep, we ran into the same problem with waking in the middle of the night. The melatonin didn't last long enough and when he woke up, his mind wouldn't shut down enough for him to get back to sleep. The psychiatric hospital put him on 1 mg of Tenex an hour before bed and he's been sleeping through the night since Halloween. Tenex isn't habit forming and it's such a low dose that I'm not concerned about him being on it. It's done wonders for him.

 

[InsaneCdn]

I second the sleep-study suggestion.
While you still might come up empty, the kinds of things that a sleep study would reveal are huge, and need to be treated before other considerations come into play.

Beyond that...
1) room temp & body temp. You have to find the right combo for each person. In our house, we sleep best with cool air and extra blankets... my parents can't sleep under heavy blankets, so sleep better in a warm house. When the kids were little, we had them sleep in "baby sleeping bags" - kind of a bunting bag that left their heads and arms free, but that wasn't easy to wiggle out of... so that as they tossed around in their sleep, the blankets stayed on. Sometimes (like me) feet tend to get cold more than the rest of the body, in which case bed socks help.

2) falling out of bed. This was huge for both of my kids for a while. One had to switch to a double bed... the other to a single. The one that had been in the single needed room for rolling around without falling out, while the one that had the double "couldn't tell where the edges were" and slept better if she had one foot touching one side, and a hand touching the other.

3) activities before bed. Technology is a big no-no. Ramps up the brain in ways that last for hours. Can make it hard to get to sleep, OR to stay asleep. Start shut-down at least an hour before bed. Watch out for too-interesting books too (like mystery stories). Find a relaxing shut-down sequence, it does take some experimenting.

4) food. Eating the wrong stuff before bed hurts sleep. But sometimes, so does an empty stomach. If supper is at least 3 hours before bed, plan a healthy soporific snack - like a glass of milk, perhaps warmed slightly with a dab of honey and a smidgen of ginger if you like it that way. If she can have nuts, leave a small bowl of peanuts and a waterbottle at the bedside. If it's 3 a.m., it won't kill her teeth to eat peanuts and drink water and then go back to sleep even without brushing teeth. It's not that long until breakfast!

 

[tiredmommy]

Duckie's sleep improved dramatically after treating her sensory processing issues.... she had been so overwhelmed most of the time that she just couldn't settle properly.