Sara Vaz

Hello everyone!


I am Sara from Portugal. I have two kids, Gabriel, 7 yo and Joana, 3 yo. I am married to Cristóvão.


It is my first time posting, but I have been reading for more or less one year and a half and this list has been unvaluable to me and my family (this would be another whole post, to say how much I am grateful to you all).


I am writing with the hope of finding suggestions to help me to improve my family´s life and to continue our unschooling journey peacefully.


I need ideas on how to help my 3 yo daughter fall asleep.


She usually falls asleep somewhere between 4am to 6am or later... She wakes up between 12am and 1.30pm…


She sometimes wakes already tired and a little bit grumpy... Sometimes she asks to go to sleep at 2pm...We can see she is really sleepy and tired!  She asks to lay in the couch to nurse and usually with a movie or cartoon videos on TV,  and sometimes we are in the couch all afternoon,  with small breaks in between to go to the bathroom or to refill the juice cup for my son, get him another snack if he needs it and sometimes get him out of the potty (he is afraid to go to the bathroom alone) . She nurses,  does not want to be  covered by blankets,  then sits on the couch or on the floor ( that when I get the breaks).  Then she calls me asking to nurse again and we go through several cycles like this until she crashes sometimes at 7\8pm. Then she sleeps for 2 or 3 hours(always wakes in the middle of the nap for more nursing) and wakes rested and ready to play.  She can go through all night.


My son wakes at 11am most days.


I work on weekends,  so I have to be out of bed at 9 am two days a week.  So I go through work days with 3 or less hours of sleep and then through the other days with 4/5hours... It is making me very, very tired!  I used to need 8 hours to feel rested.


We co-sleep ,  but since her schedules were affecting her brother,  we rearranged our sleeping arrangements.  Now my son sleeps with his daddy most nights, (they go to bed around midnight /1am, my husband sleeps and my son watches some videos in bed before falling asleep) and I sleep with my daughter in another room or in the couch. In the morning,  when my husband goes to work he sweetly puts my son next to me  in the bed (if I am in the couch I move with dd to bed with him).



At night we play (on the tablet,  play doh,  paint,  on the bath,  dress up,  doctors,  just to name some ) and we watch videos or movies,  normally on the couch nursing, and we prepare the snacks she asks.  ( She is not eating a lot lately, but nursing tons.)

We have slept many nights on the couch.  Sometimes she wants or I offer the bed,  usually with a movie.  Either on the bed or on the couch she lays nursing and when I  can feel she is almost asleep she moves from breast to breast,  uncovers, sits,  asks for food or drinks (wich most times she won’t eat or drink), asks to go to the toilet (not the potty,  she wants to go inside,  to the toilet)...And we go through these cycles all night, again and again…


One thing she does, when she notices that I am very sleepy is pinching me and jumpes on my belly (which makes very, very irritated). She has asked me sometimes not to close my eyes because she is afraid of it.

Another thing that has become a fight between us, literaly, is that she wants to be nursing in one breast and touching the other. She touches, scrathes, pinchs (not in a hard way) but it makes me crazy. I can not stand it, even if i try very hard. So I am always putting her little hand away, and she keeps trying. I tell her it hurts me, and she cries. When I am very sleepy I tell her stop it, sharply, which makes her cry also.

I try to entertain her hand, offering mine, and offering toys, but she refuses. She says she loves her “mimi”.


If she happens to skip the nap (usually on weekends, because she sleeps until 3pm) and fall asleep at 10/11/midnigth, she wakes up 2 or 3 hours later, like when she naps.


Some days, on weekends, I wake my husband in the middle of the night to take her to a car ride, where she finally falls asleep. I have tried it myself, but she wouldn't sleep and after half an hour I came back home fearfull that I would fall asleep while driving. I am very tired.


She also falls asleep on the strooler, but wakes up when I try to remove her from it (Our entrance is not strooler friendly, I have to remove her to close it to be able to get in.)



Somedays we go out almost all afternoon, when we get to keep the car (my husband needs the car to go to work and to University at night, except for Wednesdays and Thursdays), and then she falls asleep in the car on our way home. She sometimes falls asleep earlier, like 2 am, other days she can still go through the night (I honestly don't know how).

Sometimes we go out walking or take a bus to the park. She falls asleep on my arms on the way home or in seconds as soon as we hit the couch. But my son doesn't always want to go. He loves to stay home too, and 3 outings a week is more than enough for him.


This results in a very sleep deprived mummy.


Another big problem that arises from it is that it is very difficult to get time for my son. To read stuff in the games for him or to play with him. To be more present. (Sometimes I use some of the time Joana is sleeping to do something around the house).  And I am noticing that I am less tolerant with him. He is very enthusiastic with the games he loves to play and talks loudly a lot about them. As tired as I am feeling , the noise disturbs me.


Another one is that it is very difficult to work around this schedule to get some time alone with my husband, who needs it and sometimes resents that I can’t be with him more often.



(Not to speak about the household chores that I need to do)


I am alone with them most days until midnight. We have one cousin that comes to play with Gabriel once a week and my mum, who also comes once a week for a few hours, and plays with Joana and when she cans she washes a sink of dishes for me and hangs a load of laundry.


So, this situation is becoming insustainable for our family, and has been going for some months, and I can’t seem to find a way to help her. I hope you guys can see something I can’t!


Thanks in advance for your time, and sorry for the long post.


...


Sara Vaz

jameshippisley@...

Hi Sara,


This sounds very tiring for you all.


Reading your post, it seems to me that your daughter has a somewhat regular sleep schedule, which almost resembles a normal night time sleep and a nap - except that it starts something like 6 hours later than what most people would call a normal bedtime. Since you have other fixtures in your schedule (like your son's night time and your work) which force you to get up earlier than your daughter, this shift is causing you to be extremely sleep deprived.


We have had somewhat similar experiences at times with our children. If bedtime gets a little later each day, it is possible for it to shift to an extremely late hour over quite a short period of time. A few weeks of 20 minutes shift per day and suddenly everyone is staying up till the small hours which is problematic for us for various reasons. When this happens, we have found it very difficult to shift our schedule back. If we try to wake our children much earlier or stop them from napping, then they can be more tired, ultimately have a longer nap (from which it is impossible to wake them), and then fall asleep even later. Also, encouraging our children to go to sleep earlier on a given day has never proven productive. They fall asleep when they are ready to fall asleep.


The only thing that has worked for us when our schedule is off like this is to shift it back by waking our children up very slightly earlier - just 10 or 15 minutes - each day. This does over time have the effect that they are tired slightly earlier, and over the course of days bedtime does shift earlier. We didn't particularly want to interfere with our children's sleep but waking them up like this with small shifts has seemed like the best/only working solution.


You have about 6 hours shift to achieve, so at 10 minutes per day it would take you about a month to get your daughter back to a schedule which is in sync with the rest of you - if it worked. (This said, I realize that your daughters schedule is not regular to the nearest 10 minutes so this would more be a question of setting a latest time you'd let her stay asleep and shifting it earlier each day).


Good luck, hope you get some rest soon!


James

Sandra Dodd

-=-Some days, on weekends, I wake my husband in the middle of the night to take her to a car ride, where she finally falls asleep. -=-

I wouldn’t do that to anyone.
Can you get a rocking chair and rock her to sleep?

The questions/situations you have would be whether you were planning to put her in school or not, and if you’re working, that’s more important than encouraging your child to stay up later.   But if the staying up late is “because of unschooling,” then that’s the problem.
Turning lights down, long warm bath, soft music, speak softly. Maybe a pillow with headphones for her, with very soft music? Gentle music. Not sing-along music. Not funny songs.

The idea that a very young child should stay up really late isn’t “unschooling.” So you don’t need to defend the staying up. Mainstream tricks for getting a child to sleep shouldn’tbe ignored.

I’m sorry your schedule has gotten crazy. I hope there will be ideas here to help you find ways to get the house still, and kids tired, and peaceful.

Go for peace first. This might sound worthless, but don’t put ideas of unschooling before normal, everyday family peace.  

Without peace there won’tbe learning. If the day is filled with new things, and the evenings are quieter and softer, you might turn your schedule back around.

Waking children up with the smell of good food, or a happy plan, or happy music, might be a nice way to start backing the cycle up, too.  

Best wishes! Don’t rush, but don’t stall.

Sandra

semajrak@...

<<I hope there will be ideas here to help you find ways to get the house still, and kids tired, and peaceful.>>

Some ideas from our home...

Ethan loved lullabies from cultures different from our own. He didn't know the language, so the voices were soothing like another instrument.

Ocean sounds soothed him. Still, to this day, he likes to fall asleep to the sound of a fan.

Warm bubble baths with lavender seemed to relax Ethan. I've since sprayed lavender on his pillow to a similar effect. He liked warm, cozy, fuzzy, footed pjs and fuzzy blankets on the bed as well.

I had a rocking chair in our shared room and a salt lamp. Dim lighting, lullabies, rocking and me singing helped him relax into sleep.

Doug or I would read aloud to Ethan. Many, many books.

We used to dance with him in our arms by the light of the moon-lit window. He loved that and would often fall asleep in our arms as we danced.

A weighted blanket has helped him relax his limbs in latter years.

Mostly at that age, he wanted to know he wasn't going to be left out of the action, and he wanted to know that we would be close. I always stayed with him until he fell asleep. Sometimes I would get up after he fell asleep to spend a bit of time with Doug in the late evening. Sometimes I was too tired to get up, and I would stay asleep with Ethan.

Karen James.


cheri.tilford@...

hi Sara-

I wanted to comment on a few things you mentioned which made me wonder about a laissez faire philosophy in your home that may have gone a bit haywire.  

first, regarding the nursing and playing with the nipple.  my 3yo daughter does the exact same thing.  usually I'm ok with it, though I often have to remind her not to pinch or poke too hard, and if it starts to irritate me I cup my nipple and tell her no.  that has resulted in tears, and I sympathize and tell her I'm so sorry that she's sad but I simply tell her it hurts me, and even if I'm just annoyed by it I want her to breastfeed for as long as she wants and if I'm repeatedly irritated by her nursing it will sour the breastfeeding relationship.  so not only am I protecting myself from unnecessary pain and annoyance, I'm ensuring she can get what she wants, even if she doesn't know that.  also, when she's tired, her jaw slackens and her teeth slowly clamp down on my nipple.  she's likely to cry when I tell her it hurts when she's that tired, so I suggest that we snuggle, especially since at that point she's not getting much milk but she wants me close.  

we have a family bed and she sleeps in the middle on her "special favorite pillow", a half-size pillow for which I made her a pillowcase from one of my old sweatshirts.  she loves her spot in the middle, and one of our bedtime routines is she asks her dad to come tease her, so he says he's going to sleep in the middle on her special favorite pillow, and they have a little wrestling match with loads of laughter while she defends her space and her pillow.  she fell asleep in my arms until about a year old, and I'd just hold her while we watched tv or whatever until my husband and I were tired enough to go to bed.  once the tv began to disturb her sleep, I would nurse her to sleep in bed, so having a pillow all her own helped make that transition.  nowadays while I'm nursing her to sleep I read aloud to her from the kindle app on my phone - one-handed reading a book made my fingers cramp.  when I come to bed sometimes she wakes up and wants to nurse some more.  I give her a few minutes and then ask if it's ok if we snuggle back to back, so I can read on my phone without the light bothering her.  the first time I made that request I explained why, and she rarely says "no, I need more milk".   now that she's so big I always wake up when she nurses (according to my husband, when she was a baby we would both sleep through it) so if I'm especially tired I give her a few minutes then tell her I'm tired and ask if we can snuggle, which works so we can both go back to sleep. 

sleep has always been very important to me.  my biggest fear about having a baby was how I would survive the sleep deprivation.  having her sleep on me for all her sleeps in her first year meant for me that I wasn't sleep deprived because she slept so well (many people thought I was crazy, but it worked, and I loved it).  now, sleep time is one of the only things I initiate, even if she protests a bit.  knowing her, how much sleep she needs to be happy the next day, knowing how much sleep I need, and a little personal recharge time after she's in bed means I like her to be in bed by a certain hour.  because I ask so little of her otherwise, and we've talked about why I think it's important to get enough sleep, and because we have a fun bedtime routine (including juice, yogurt, and sometimes teeth brushing in bed) she quite happily goes along 98% of the time.  she even let's me leave the room before she's asleep, knowing I'm immediately available for anything she needs.  I feel like I would go crazy if I let her play until she dropped.  on days she skips a nap, I sometimes miss the mark and she ends up in a crumpled heap over something minor like the cat sitting in the spot on the couch where she wants to sit. I see getting her to bed at what I consider a reasonable hour part of being her partner - I have more experience and know that hyper tired means a meltdown may be just around the corner.  and if I'm sleep deprived, I can't meet her needs as effectively. 

I hope some of my rambling was helpful. 

cheri

alohabun@...

<<Another thing that has become a fight between us, literaly, is that she wants to be nursing in one breast and touching the other. She touches, scrathes, pinchs (not in a hard way) but it makes me crazy. >>

One of my kids used to like to touch the other nipple while nursing too. Because that felt very uncomfortable to me, I asked her to touch my belly button instead. That felt SO much better! 

Maybe you could see if your daughter would be willing to try that (if her touching your belly button feels okay to your body). Perhaps it would work as a replacement for the nipple?  

Laurie