Sleep help needed!!

imogen37

Hi

The twin 2 of my boys has completely lost his sleeping pattern after 2 infections and 2 short stays in the hospital. He is 15months/12 months corrected and has spastic quadruplegic CP.

Previously he would go down around 10am for a nap - he would go to his cot awake and after 10 min of moaning he would go to sleep fro around 2 h. For night time he would go up after the milk, get his sleeping bag on and after a wee cuddle he would go to his cot and go to sleep when he was ready. he would be asleep no later than 8pm and sleep to no less than 4.30am.

As I said, after his illnesses he is a changed man. Yesterday he had a daytime nap of 1h, today it was 30 min. Last summer, when he was really bad at sleeping and we were regularly up 1am-5am with him, he was guaranteed to sleep 8pm-1am; now he needs to be settled 4-5 times before midnight and then moan the rest of the night. He has been so noisy that we have had to take him back to our room or he would wake his brother up too.

So just would like to know what other people have done to help their little ones to sleep. After getting used to sleep, I find it really hard going!

Thanks everybody!

x

ScopeHelpline

Take a look at our sleep pages:

http://www.scope.org.uk/help-and-information/families-and-parenting/sleep-difficulties-children/sleep/about-sleep

mafala

Hi Imogen,

I'm a paediatric osteopath and mum to a bad sleeper with CP. My best advise is - nip it in the bud, quick! In my professional experience it's normal for babies to get an erratic sleep routine after an illness, or any type of upheaval. It seems to mess up with their body clock and gets them used to mum and dad's cuddles in the middle of the night. It would be wise to get him checked to make sure it's not a physical problem that's making him uncomfortable and unable to stay asleep. If that's all fine and it seems to be mostly behavioural, Cerebra offers the services of a sleep counsellor who you can ask for advise on how to sleep train. She emailed me some useful information on different types of sleep training methods. You can try and look www.cerebra.org.uk.

Good luck!