Thursday 10 July 2008

What is it with kids and bedtimes?

When they're tiny it's fighting through colic, or days and nights mixed up...and of course the regular round of waking up for night feeds. Babies love sleep, but quite often aren't actually that good at it at night.

Then you move past the newborn phase, some people take the easy-come, easy-go route and don't have any structure to bedtime, some go for the co-sleeping either by design or from being worn down into it and some go for the full-on, by the clock bedtime routine.

Just as you have that sussed, and hopefully sleeping through the night is something fairly regular....along comes TEETHING, WEANING, COLDS ......Yeah!!!! You thought you had a sleep-through baby. WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Soooo....teeth - check, solids - check, colds - check. You know what to do with all of them, within reason. Clever Mummy, you're a real pro.

Muahahahahahaaaaaa says the sleep fairy. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Baby wants to give up one nap, and discovers the joys of overtiredness. and playing. and climbing. and m-a-n-i-p-u-l-t-i-o-n. Deliberate, carefully-planned manipulation.

You overcome that one. Along comes 'dreaming' and 'Mummy-can-you-say-separation-anxiety'. Oh, and more climbing. And the manipulation skills are growing.

Just as nights slowly start to become a time when expecting more than 3 hours sleep on the trot isn't something too unrealistic, the bedtime routine grooooooooows.

Playing and delaying. One and the same. One loo visit turns into 4. Cuddles and kisses turn into a cycle of 'cuggle'...'now tiss'...'cuggle'. Brushing teeth starts as cajolment to do it, and then moves into begging to stop. Every toy in the house, bedding, clothing, food, drink and sponges to wash faces with explode in every room, vitally important and when removed cause screams of dismay.

And you know, I am convinced, we'll get past this only to move into 'pleeeease get out of bed now'.

4 comments:

Ronda's Rants said...

I know you will never believe me when I say...it goes by so heartbreakingly (Is that a word?) fast!! My babies are 28, 25 and 23 and it seems like yesterday that I felt just as you! May you sleep well and prosper.

Kim said...

Hope sleep gets better. Bed times and nap times are the one thing that I am very strict about. I guess because I am a crazy person without sleep. Luckily my boys love to sleep - not sure if I did something right or they just have good DNA for sleeping. Well, they are males afterall!

Anonymous said...

believe me.. I FEEL YOUR PAIN!

Nic said...

I am sure it'll fly by Ronda, and it isn't really a moan - we've hit a 'good' bit for the time being...this blog was prompted by a friend's 2 yr old suddenly starting having the screaming abdabs at bedtime and it made me think just how much the 'sleeping through' thing is such a misnomer for so long!