Sleep Update: The Big Girl Bed

For us it's definitely following a two steps forward one step back course: The first night in the big girl bed she sailed right through till morning without a problem. The second night she was up every 3 hrs. Every time she goes through a bad sleep period we always back-slide in terms of how we handle it. We always start from the beginning where we rush right in and comfort her for as long as she seems to need it whether it's 10 minutes or 1 hr. We never plan on it being an hour but she often asks us to "Sit in the wocking chair" and if we're doing that time passes in a surreal way until the next thing you know you've been sitting next to her bed for an hour or more.

So after the first night she woke up 3-4 times and we started off with sitting with her. Between sitting there for an hour, her sleeping an hour, then waking up again-- it was an awful night of no sleep for everyone.

The next night we decided to go with The pick her up and put her back in bed without talking Method-- SuperNanny style. She was able to do that somewhere between 15-20 times I'd estimate. Maybe it just felt like that and it was only 10 times-- either way it was constant back and forth between 1am and 3am. Not fun.

The next night we found her standing on her bed pulling things off the tall dresser next to her bed. We thought the room was mostly safe- but sometimes we underestimate how creative this little girl really is. So we removed everything potentially harmful from the dresser and put her back to bed.

The next night we tried bribery-- if she stayed in bed all night she'd get a treat in the morning. That worked! She stayed in bed all night and the next morning she got a doughnut hole from Dunkin' Donuts.

The next night, we tried it again... but she discovered how to take off her pajamas and diaper. And she was stealthy and quiet about it-- as my husband would say, "Like a tiny ninja." We were downstairs listening to the monitor when we heard a soft rustling and asked each other, "What was that?" But then it was quiet again-- so we moved on. A few minutes letter another faint noise... I decided to go upstairs and investigate. I found her in the room next to her bedroom, our office, standing by the futon-- naked, no PJs, no diaper- just a smile. She looked like she was thinking about what she should do next. I called my husband and told him he needed to come upstairs and see for himself. It's like the freedom from the crib rails has made her delirious and she wants to free herself of anything confining including her clothing. So we put her clothes back on and sat next to her bed until she was asleep. We also moved the gate we had in the hallway right up to her door. No more naked wandering.

The next morning she asked for her treat but we told her that running around naked does not get you a treat and since she got up she would not be getting one. She fussed but she understood.

That night we reminded her she needed to stay in bed to get her morning treat. She nodded her big exaggerated toddler nod. Can you see where this is going? We didn't say-- "and keep your clothes on." So sometime after midnight we heard quiet rustling. My husband investigated- he found her naked on her bed. We believe she did try to pee on the diaper because there was a wet spot near it but turns out her aim is not great when it comes to trying to pee on the diaper she'd taken off in the dark. So, yes, she stayed in her bed but she got naked and wet the bed.

So the last few nights we've asked her to promise not to get out of the bed AND to keep her pajamas AND diaper on. So far she's doing ok... it's been ok for 2 nights.

The modified cry-it-out did work for us more reliably than anything else back when she was 6 months old-- when she was in a crib.

I don't know how you get a toddler to cry-it-out and go back to sleep in her big girl bed because Millie is finding all kinds of new and creative ways to run amok in her room. She's not crying-- she's getting naked and swinging from the drapes. Is there a chapter on that in the sleep books?

Anyway, 5 nights and counting. We are still rewarding her for staying in bed- a little book or a tiny toy. OK, I confess- we started off with a doughnut hole-- but we're better now. Hopefully some of this delirious energy is settling down.