We have had a lot of issues with Zachary and his sleep habits. What started out as simple mistakes have manifested into giant problems that are becoming impossible to solve. Zachary will not go to sleep unless either Jodi or I are in the room. Usually it is a tantrum of him yelling chair and until we sit down he won’t go to sleep, but this has evolved into him waking up almost religiously at 12:30am and at around 3am screaming for us. He does not have the ability to self sooth.
At first we figured maybe it was just time to convert him to a big boys bed, he was at the point that he could almost climb out of the crib and felt this to be a bigger problem then the sleep and hoped that maybe he would feel more empowered to sleep on his own. This has backfired with Zach waking up, and walking into our room where he is rewarded by being picked up and placed between Jodi and I. The end result is sleep for all of us. This has become so common that Zachary relies on it and it really needs to stop, but it seems neither Jodi or I have the mental fortitude to do the right thing.
What we need is a new plan. Zachary needs to learn to go to bed without us in the room, which I believe will also trigger him to learn how to self soothe when he goes from NREM to REM and back again during the night. It is a clinical fact that children (and adults) go into a sleep cycle where a child goes into REM sleep after about 90 minutes of NREM sleep. Occasionally the child will pop out of rem, and re-start the cycle. Most kids wake up when leaving REM and must learn to close their eyes and go to sleep again. Zachary just wakes and screams, getting himself more worked up until one of us cave and go in to rescue him. It usually takes about 10-20 minutes to calm him down and he will eventually fall asleep only to wake up an hour later and come to our room.
So the new plan is simple: put him to bed without the crutch of us sitting in the chair. This is going to be hard on Jodi and myself because we don’t want him to cry and throw a tantrum, we also have to put a gate on his door so he can’t just get out of bed and walk into the playroom or our room. We have to gain the mental fortitude to force him to get past the crying and screaming, get back into his own bed and go to sleep. When he wakes up, we need to let him cry himself to sleep which means still more mental toughness on our parts to not cave in. I figure if we actually stick to our guns this problem will be solved in a few days.
Truth be told I am at wits end. I blame myself, and I blame Jodi for this behavior. What was cute at first has turned into a giant nightmare. Our doctors are not helping because they provide the feedback saying it is ok to let him sleep in our bed. I think this is a load of crap and wish they would provide more help to us in this situation. Right now my wife just passed the computer room with Zachary in hand trying to put him down to bed again. What a nightmare.
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