My son didn't sleep for 5 years and I know how it ends

I have one of those kids.

The one that never sleeps.

I speak now from the other side (barely).

My sweet sleep-stealer

I am there.

It does exist: The Elusive Other Side.

I have spent HOURS on the fucking floor, at the end of beds, hovering at the doorway, waiting for the child to SLEEP.

I have read books on repeat, ad infinitum, hoping for that elusive moment where he is finally asleep...

Courtesy of www.crappypictures.com

I have tried sleep training, sleep cry-ing-it-out, sleep being-especially-nice and being entirely firm and shouting and crying and being so nice it hurts.
 Bribery, sticker charts, happy words, angry words, empathy.

I have been through the works.

I have had doctors, health visitors, friends, family, neighbours' opinions, hearing tests, sensitivity tests, blood tests...

Sometimes they Just. Don't. Fucking. Sleep.

I am speaking completely as a soldier from the other side of the war: in all honesty there is no secret 'thing', no tricks, no manipulation.

I'm so sorry.

The only bloody thing that has worked in the end, in the long run, at the end of the day, is TIME.

I've had all the books, the parenting manuals.

The bloody hypnotising rabbit.



I tried night lights and splitting the boys up and bunk beds and separate beds.

We had the family bed (my poor back), the floor bed (don't ask!) the sleepovers, the late nights, the early nights and the fairy lights.

Audio books. Done.

Sitting outside the door. Tick.

End of the bed.  Oh the endless hours.

Being a total bitch and telling him he HAS to go to sleep because we can't keep doing this, okay? You are a big boy now, you have to be able to go to sleep on your own...please...mummy has lots and lots to do and I'm just here, you can still see me, you can still hear me...while he sobs and pleads and begs and it all ends in tears from both of us...

Years.

Not days.

Not hours.

Not months.

Years.

Somehow...inexplicably...probably after one of those very very rare nights of sleep when Ethan was 4 years old and we had maybe had a holiday and some food and were genereally totally caught off guard, we decided a third child would be a magical addition to our brood.

Somehow.

Don't you judge me - being a parent is filled with the complete absurdity of spending a lot of time in absolute despair while also spending a lot of time in complete love and adoration for what you have made.

We had our third baby.

And LUCKILY, very very luckily, he is a dream to put to bed (much like the first).

Magically, Ethan has settled.

We have still had our problems.

It's not been perfect or smooth-sailing or completely a black-and-white progression, but somehow...it's good now (fingers crossed, touch wood etc etc)

He goes to bed alone.

In his own space,

He stays there all night.

Very occasionally. he gets into our bed and sleeps with us, but it's really not often (my back is a lot happier.)

Someone advised that I should write a piece to tell you all my secret of getting my son to sleep: I have no secrets.

There are no tricks.

He decided he was going to stay in his bed.

Some nights he still asks for s, but it's not half as bad as it was.


I know you came here on the promise that I was going to help you to get your kid to sleep.

I think what I really want to tell you is trope-y as fuck and a bit shit.

It will pass.

Your baby will stop being a baby.

He (or she) will consider himself (or herself) big enough to do it him (or her) self and they will do it.

And gradually, oh so slowly and surely, it will dissipate.

Suddenly it will be something that you used to do.

In the meantime, I suggest you do what you need to do.

I have regrets, sure , we all do as parents.

I DO NOT regret:

Putting him into nursery to get a break.

Buying more wine/beer to 'treat' myself after a particularly difficult session of getting him to sleep.

Trying absolutely everything with gusto.

Tapping out and letting my husband/mum/whoever else do it (so they can also realise I'm not making this shit up).

I DO regret:

The crying it out - it was fairly obvious he was never going to go to sleep this way and it made bedtime an absolutely awful process for both of us.

Not just letting him sleep in our bed when he requested it; there's an innate thing in a child to be nurtured - I don't know whose agenda I was playing to when I denied him that nurturing.

Not just going with my instincts and making a family bed. Or feeling judged for my feelings.   I was never FOR co-sleeping, but it sure as hell would have made or lives a helluva lot more easier if I'd simply just went with my gut feeling and let him go in the bed with us, if that was what it took to get a good night's sleep.

I'm sorry I have no magic cure.

I absolutley know what you were hoping for.

All I can say is, I have made it.

I am there.

There is an end.  It will come.

Hold on.  Be kind to yourself.  Be kind to your kid.

It will pass.

Sleep Disorders And Night Terrors - Our Five Year Battle (And Counting)

Night terrors are kind of crazy.

For my middle son they happen most nights, about an hour after he goes to sleep.

He always screams.

He's always inconsolable.

He always wakes the baby.

There's nothing we can do for him; there's no comfort we can give him, no amount of trying to cuddle him, no amount of kind words or asking him to stop.

They come right out of nowhere.  Some nights he can be absolutely fine.

But most nights he wakes in this howling, screaming, terrified mess.

Hard to believe it, but they are tougher on us than they are on him.

He wakes in the morning with absolutely zero recollection of what has happened.  No awareness.  Just a nice, peaceful night, sometimes with a funny dream.

Thankfully.

We put the three boys to bed each night within a routine which has never really changed within the annals of time.

Bath, Supper, Teeth, Story, Story-tape, Bed.

It's pretty much the same every night.

It can be time-consuming.

Difficult to put into motion at the end of a long day.  It's important to me boys always go to bed happy.  Always with a hug and a kiss.

However, for poor Ethan, however much we tried, this wasn't always the case.

He may well have no memory of his night terror as they are now, but he used to have other fears at bed time too.

He's still scared of the dark.  He still fears the silence and the darkness around him when he wakes alone in the night.

His wee imagination goes into over-drive.

It all started when he was about a year old; the sudden middle-of-the-night screaming, the 'temper tantrums' which we just put down to sheer bloody-mindedness of our 'difficult' child.

He was never easy to put to bed.  He was a handful when he was awake!

But we all dreaded bedtime.

Our eldest son had always gone to bed nicely, easily, quietly.  But not Ethan.

He was terrified of going to sleep; absolutely adamant that he wasn't going to do it.

Every. Single. Night.

We'd spend hours indulging his night-time whims, reading him to sleep, changing bedrooms, changing lightbulbs, putting up blackout blinds and curtains on top of blinds.

We tried staying in the room and holding his hand, letting him sleep in our bed, letting him sleep in a sleeping bag, letting him go to bed with a million cuddly toys, as he was convinced that 'this time, mum, this time they'll look after me'.

Yup, this has been in the bed too! It's a bloody dressing up costume!

We tried to convince him he was being silly, it was 'just a phase', that he was big and didn't need us.

We listened at his door as he cried and screamed and pleaded with us to come back in the room until he fell asleep and we tried toughing it out.

We let him fill his belly before bed, we tried only letting him have something small, we tried different diets.
Reward charts.
Incentives.
Books which supposedly hypnotize.

It felt like we tried absolutely everything.

What we didn't know at the beginning, was that Ethan had terrible glue-ear, which was so profound that the doctor at the ENT clinic told us that basically, Ethan spent the first two years of his life hearing as though he was submerged under deep water all the time.

It took until he was two years old to diagnose, and then another year before he would get the grommets inserted, which changed his life overnight.  Suddenly he became verbal, a lot less frustrated and a lot easier to deal with.

The grommets were certainly an improvement beyond everything else, but we still had to deal with the fear and behaviour which comes from not being able to hear properly in those first three formative years.

It's had a huge impact.

He's a great kid.  He is very funny, with a rapier wit way beyond his years.  He is very clever.  But he has struggled.

Hearing properly very much contributes to other functions:

• Social interaction: He's never struggled to make a friend, but there's been a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of upsets!
• Communication: We've dealt with a LOT of tantrums, a lot of frustrated screaming and a lot of shouting.  Gradually we are teaching him to tone it down, but yes, this is a very hard thing to explain to others, especially as they think he is being horrible.
• Reading and Writing: He started school this year and he has tried so very hard, and is getting their, but his failure to hear words as they are supposed to sound for a long time has mucked up his internal alphabet system.  He has fought very hard for every single letter.
• Sensitivity: The grommets are great, but whereas before he didn't hear much, now he can hear everything, and to him it is very very loud! He therefore gets upset in places where there's more than your average noise levels, like parties, concerts and gym halls.

As he gets older he is becoming more and more able. His ability to communicate gets better and he is becoming less frustrated with life, which is great.

He now goes to bed with a lot less hassle.  Well, there's still some, but compared to what we used to deal with, it's nothing really.

We are however, still dealing with the night terrors. The last bastion of sleep disorder hell.

Apparently he'll grow out of them.

Apparently.

I really hope it's soon!