Sleep

It is currently 8:30 and Maddie has been asleep for about 20 minutes. Normally we are just finishing up stories and starting the struggle of going to bed. There would be crying and whining and tantrums till somewhere around 9/9:15 (and honestly sometimes 9:30) she would finally fall asleep. This would then be followed by 1-3 wakeups during the night where we would go in and snuggle with her till she fell asleep or bring her into our bed so we could get some sleep. Obviously none of us were really getting good sleep. A blogger that I follow posted this week about sleep training her 9 month old. She also has a 3/almost 4 year old who they had done some sleep training with earlier this year. 

I went back and read some of the posts and realized that it was beyond time to do some sort of sleep training. obviously the plan the blogger put in place would not work point for point for Maddie but I figured if I could try a few things perhaps we'd get there in time.  One of the biggest things I took from that was putting her girls to bed earlier. In her current plan they go down about 6:30. Now that timing doesn't work for us as we don't typically get home till about 5:45 and dinner is typically being finished at about 6:15/6:30 but the concept was there. Normally we bring Maddie up around 7:45 for a bath. I wondered what would happen if we went up at 7:15 for a bath.

Well the answer to that is a lot less drama. Being done our full routine by 8pm seems to work out well. Going to bed after that tends to have more issues and tantrums and I realized that perhaps the reason for that is because at that point Maddie is over tired. The hardest part of doing the routine earlier is that there is less time to spend with Maddie. I think its one of those things that most working parents struggle with as they get home in the evening and when you put your kids to bed only a few hours after you get home (or within an hour) you are missing out on time with them. I think that was the main reason I left Maddie stay up late before now. But I will tell you we tend to get a little more time in the morning now as getting her out of bed is not as hard and I'm already up. So I will gladly trade 30 extra minutes in the evening for some extra time in the morning and a child that goes to bed a little easier.

As for the waking up in the middle of the night... we're working through it. Hopefully in a few weeks she'll sleep through the night but if not hopefully she'll at least figure out how to put herself back to sleep. She's gotten better over the last few nights and hopefully that improvement will continue. I know there will be set backs but I'm hopeful that this time we'll get there.