HAMISH DENSTON
I used to love summer. loved it. it was easily my favourite time of year. Sunny days that stretched on into languid evenings drinking beer and playing guitar on the deck. Then came our first summer with a toddler.
As the sun stayed later and later in the sky, so too did our daughter stay later and later out of her bed. We continued to adhere to her usual bedtime of 7pm, but rather than falling asleep after a few minutes, she started playing up. She started to get out of bed and muck around with things in her room. She started making up reasons to come out to the lounge. Basically she started doing anything she could think of to put off going to sleep. it didn’t seem to matter how tired she was, she just kept fighting it.
Nothing that we’ve tried seems to have been more effective than anything else. We’ve finally got round to buying some blockout material to put behind her curtains, and I’m hoping like crazy that this will make a difference. I’d dearly love for her to start going to sleep before 9pm again and for me to be able to reclaim my evenings!
Aside from anything else, the late nights make her crabby the next day. She also seems to sleep through the night more readily if she gets to sleep earlier, closer to her ordinary routine time. it tends to become a bit of a cycle too, when she goes to sleep late she naps later into the afternoon, making it harder for her to get to sleep in the evening and so on…
Spending a couple of extra hours on putting her to bed at night makes it pretty tough to get things done about the place – including writing blog posts! it also means that my “unwinding time” starts later, and I tend to get to bed later myself as a result. By the time it gets to Friday night I tend to just crash. I usually send myself to bed earlier on Fridays than any other night. good thing that Friday night TV is so crappy.
To be honest though, our wee angel’s never been a top-notch sleeper. in her early days she’d only sleep for 45 minutes at a time during the day. At night she’d sleep for about two hours at a stretch. this proved challenging for my wife, to say the least. it was also one area where I had a completely misguided idea of what life with a baby would be like. I thought that my wife would be able to make up for lost sleep at night by sleeping during the day, while the baby was asleep. Boy how wrong I was! I honestly thought that babies spent the first six months of their lives sleeping, only waking up to eat, poop and play.
At least back when she was just a few weeks old she would sleep better on one of us parents – up to twice as long. this gave me an ironclad excuse for watching the cricket. Sadly she doesn’t do that anymore.
I often get a wee pang of jealousy when I see parents carrying sleeping children around or pushing them around in strollers. in malls, in parks or just walking the streets, their toddlers are happily napping away. my daughter has slept in her stroller exactly one time that I can remember. it seems the only place she’ll fall asleep now is in bed.
What are your kids’ sleep habits like? has summer and daylight saving had an impact on their routines, and your sanity? What are your top tips for ensuring a smooth bedtime experience for all involved?
PS – sorry there’s no photo with this blog – she never stays asleep long enough to get one.
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Oh! Those (sleepless) summer nights
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