The Unexpected Effect of Potty Training on Naptime

If you can believe it, until about a month ago, the boy would happily toddle upstairs for a nap nearly every day. Lucky, I know.  Unfortunately an unexpected side effect of potty training has been a sudden refusal to nap.  The little guy may be almost three, but he still needs a nap; he's exhausted and constantly has bags under his eyes.

For the first couple of weeks I alternated between putting him in his room (and allowing him to scream for 10-20 minutes until he fell asleep) and plopping him on the couch with a movie so he would veg out for an hour or so and unwind.  Unfortunately, he then started to outlast me with the screaming and I eventually stopped trying to get him to nap altogether.

A month of not napping is definitely catching up with him, the other day he told me 'I tired' at 10am.  He promptly laid down on the couch and asked for a blanket and 'a little tv'.  Unfortunately these days a rest on the couch is simply not having the desired effect.  He doesn't rest for long and his cranky, moody, tired self promptly returns.

All of this I could probably live with, but the boy is the type of child that needs his sleep.  Sadly, the combination of an overtired and overstimulated boy frequently results in night wakings, based on my readings (and the fact that I had them) I assume they are night terrors.  He screams and screams and is not particularly soothed by our presence; in fact the only thing that calms him is leaving his room.  Although we do sometimes let him watch a show on TV, we don't want that to become habit so we try to avoid it.

Lately he's been waking just as we are going to bed and we have been letting him sleep in our bed, something we have worked very hard to avoid.

We have NEVER let him sleep in our bed before and we certainly don't want that to become a habit, so this week I started forcing him to nap again.  It seems easier to get him to nap in the day then to try and get him back into his room in the middle of the night.  Fortunately both yesterday and today, the screaming lasted only 20 minutes before he fell asleep.  He obviously needs the nap, I had to wake him up from a pretty deep sleep at 3:30 after a two hour nap and he still went to bed without a fuss at 7pm.

Did potty training have any unexpected effects? Do your kids nap? Do you let your kids sleep in your bed? Do your kids wake with night terrors? How do you cope?

sleep changes

photo by the hubs 

Last night was the first in about two weeks that the boy slept throught the night.  It's been awful.  It's amazing to think how we function as new mother's.  I remember my midwife telling me that I had to ensure I got at least a total of six hours of sleep per day, even if it was broken up.

Now, almost 18 months later, a mere two weeks of broken sleep and I feel like a mess.  It started with a nasty bought of teething, which surprisingly resulted in two top molars cutting.  Once the teething started to ease up however, the boy started experiencing what I suspect are night terrors.

Multiple times this week the boy has woken up screaming and flailing within about two hours of falling asleep.  He did not seems to be soothed or calmed by our parental presence and when he did finally settle, as soon as I got close to putting him back in his crib he would resume screaming.  We ended up sleeping together in the spare bedroom a few times this past week just so I could get some rest and the boy was out like a light within moments of laying down.

After discussions with my Mom (I suffered from night terrors too) and reading through some Google search results, I feel like I have a better handle on what we might be facing.

What a conundrum, tired toddlers are more likely to experience terrors, but how do you get your child to sleep when he keeps having terrors?  We decided to focus on comfort.  Last night I had a nice bath with the boy, we washed and played then went about our nighttime routine.  Only last night I decided to put a light quilt into the boys bed so that I could tuck him in nice and tight.

This was not a random act, recently I've noticed that more and more the boy is putting his head on my shoulder and his hands at his sides when we have our pre-sleepy-time snuggles.  He is essentially assuming the swaddle position and that's absolutley about comfort for him.  Tucking him in seemed like a reasonable extension to swaddling, especially now that the boy's a toddler and the suffocation risks associated with blankets in the bed are long gone. 

I don't know if tucking the boy in had anything to do with sleeping through the night, with no wake-ups and no terrors, but I do know he calmed and settled in quickly when I tucked him in.  I did it again tonight and now we've passed the two hour mark without any incident.  I suspect I'll be tucking the boy in each night from this point on, I don't really see any downfalls and in all truth its starting to feel like fall around here so an extra blanket will surely be welcome.

Do you tuck your little one in?
How old was your little one when you started to tuck them in?