When I decided to blog our current sleep-tastrophe at our house, I had a hard time deciding which "category" to put it in. I cannot stand blogs that tell the do's and don't's of parenting, like their opinion or advise is the only way it should be done and all others are wrong, or worse! Bad parents! It makes me crazy! What I do like, however, is telling stories between my friends (or reading different ones online) about what works and doesn't work for particular families. With these, I can pick and choose what might work for my family! So this blog, is in the "Parenting Forum". It's a place full of comments (hopefully!) and what works for our house :) I've decided that parenting is the most basic form of the scientific method. We, as parents, make a hypothesis about what will work for our kids, then we try through an experiment, and usually we fail, lol. Then we keep trying, and sooner or later we finally succeed!
Back to the purpose of tonight's post, our experiment. We are having some serious sleep issues, and mom and dad are exhausted... When our oldest was younger, we did everything by-the-book. She slept all night long in her bed, no issues. Then, once we had the second baby, she realized that the baby was sleeping in our bed and she wanted to also. This was the start of the downfall. We let her.
Once the baby was a little older, we moved her to her crib where she would sleep. Though she still woke through the night, she was at least in her own her crib. We did have the big one in the bed, but one was better than two.
Then, we converted the crib to a twin bed... and... she woke up, of course, and came to our bed where mom, dad, and sister were. Back to four. We've been at this stage for a while now. I keep hoping it will get better that one night the girls will magically stay in their beds all night. We put them together in the same bed at night hoping that would work. But they just woke each other in the night and both came.
In other words, we are in a full on sleep-TASTROPHE!
So tonight we are trying something new. The girls, since sleeping in the same bed, have had the same bedtime, 8. It's a little late for the younger as she gets really cranky at bed time, and it's a little early for the older as she is not usually tired enough so she takes forever to fall asleep. Tonight we changed the youngest bedtime to 7:30 and the oldest will be 8:30, plus, they are going to their own beds...
Wish us luck!
What works for your house? I'd love to hear your stories and share them with the fellow mommas and dads reading the post who are as exhausted as we are!
Back to the purpose of tonight's post, our experiment. We are having some serious sleep issues, and mom and dad are exhausted... When our oldest was younger, we did everything by-the-book. She slept all night long in her bed, no issues. Then, once we had the second baby, she realized that the baby was sleeping in our bed and she wanted to also. This was the start of the downfall. We let her.
Once the baby was a little older, we moved her to her crib where she would sleep. Though she still woke through the night, she was at least in her own her crib. We did have the big one in the bed, but one was better than two.
Then, we converted the crib to a twin bed... and... she woke up, of course, and came to our bed where mom, dad, and sister were. Back to four. We've been at this stage for a while now. I keep hoping it will get better that one night the girls will magically stay in their beds all night. We put them together in the same bed at night hoping that would work. But they just woke each other in the night and both came.
In other words, we are in a full on sleep-TASTROPHE!
So tonight we are trying something new. The girls, since sleeping in the same bed, have had the same bedtime, 8. It's a little late for the younger as she gets really cranky at bed time, and it's a little early for the older as she is not usually tired enough so she takes forever to fall asleep. Tonight we changed the youngest bedtime to 7:30 and the oldest will be 8:30, plus, they are going to their own beds...
Wish us luck!
What works for your house? I'd love to hear your stories and share them with the fellow mommas and dads reading the post who are as exhausted as we are!