The boy is not sleeping. Clearly he is making up for all those easy times we had when he was a newborn. But even with my infinite patience, I was frustrated last night when we were at hour two of non-stop crying, thrashing and not sleeping.
At 3am last night, when Rich took over to wrestle the boy into a sleeper hold, I emailed all the parents in our birth class out of desperation. Maybe one of them found some perfect solution to soothe the toddling beast. Solutions were few and far between, but there was a ton of sympathy. Some excerpts are:
Dean has what we think are night terrors, but they are not every night. However, we did go through a few weeks where he was waking up every night SCREAMING, and on a few occasions stayed awake for about an hour or so. I really do believe that was when he was cutting teeth. Unfortunately I do not have a solution for either of these issues, but Brian figured out that taking him outside seemed to calm him down for some reason. I'm not sure if it was the fresh air, or the birds, or maybe just the shock of being outside when it was cool, but he would stop crying and just look around. I'm sure our neighbors think we are nuts, but it worked. Maybe it's just the change of scenery, but it's worth a try. It calmed him down from the screaming so that we could refocus on trying to get back to bed.
Good luck!
Lots of children fear falling asleep because they don't understand it and think that they might not wake up. So, setting a plan (talking about breakfast or good morning hugs, whatever) is a good seed to plant... just be careful, though, because they will remember if you said strawberry yogurt and will be totally distraught if you don't have any more!
I wish I could help! I may win the award for having the worst sleeper ever. Chase still wakes EVERY SINGLE NIGHT at least 5 times. Sometimes it is every half hour, sometimes it is every two hours. We have tried everything and just have to chalk it up to being his personality. Teething is horrible for him, he doesn't sleep well with me, or without me and mostly won't stay asleep unless he is touching me. At this point I just hope he grows out of it sooner than later. We wanted a second baby, but until Chase sleeps decent stretches that is not going to happen - Ryan isn't allowed to TOUCH me until Chase is two! :) he he he - poor guy
At least we don't have to worry about them not making it through the night anymore...right? they just like to keep reminding us of that.
So we don't have a new plan for tonight, but I feel better all the same. I may feel differently at 3am, but I certainly don't feel alone.