Joey’s Sleep Story Part 2 - Split Nights

I recently shared a little bit of Joey’s story and all about her pacifier use (read: obsession) and how we finally got rid of it. You can read the full version here if you missed it.

But just as a reminder…Of my 3 kids, Joey has given me the most trouble in the realm of sleep.

When Joey was an infant, she IMMEDIATELY took to her pacifier. As long as she had that paci, she was calm and happy. 

As soon as Joey could replace the paci herself, we began putting 4-6 in her crib at a time so she could always find one. When she woke up at night (as all babies, kids, and adults do between sleep cycles) she did not need our support. She just found a paci or 4 and went back to sleep.

People always told me how alert she was at a very young age. This should have foreshadowed what was to come. I didn’t know what I was in for.

Ok so now you’re probably wondering how this little independent angel has given me the most sleep trouble in almost 4 years.

Maybe she was a little too independent…

Well, since she was so independent, she spent a lot of time awake in her crib. I mean, like, a lot of time. She wasn’t neglected, I promise. She just slept pretty late in the mornings (bedtime 6/6:30, wake up around 8 am). Landen was and still is an early riser, so dealing with one needy kid instead of two was ideal, so I let her sleep. 

Of course, if you have a kid sleeping late in the morning, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to get said kid sleeping by your desired 6:30/7 pm bedtime forever. So did I start waking her up in the morning when she started partying in her crib until 8pm? No I most certainly did not. I let Eric deal with it because I did early mornings with Landen so he did late nights with Joey. This worked for us for a while. We honestly would pretend to put Joey to bed because Landen wouldn’t go to sleep unless she was asleep, and then I would take Landen to bed and if necessary, Eric would go read Joey a few more books and do her bedtime over again. 

Time for a nap transition…

Eventually, this became unsustainable because as her sleep needs were changing, her nights were just getting too late. So did I start waking her up in the morning when she started partying in her crib until 9 or 10 at night? No, I most certainly did not. I just took her naps away. She dropped down to one nap at 11 months. This is incredibly early - most kids drop between 13-18 months but most typical is around 14/15 months.

This was honestly perfect for us at that point, because I went from Joey napping 9:30-11 and 2-3:30 and Landen napping 12-2/230 and never having one single moment to myself, to both of them napping at the same time. Glorious. And she handled it super well! She just made up for any lost daytime sleep by adding hours in the morning, while still taking a 3 hour nap every day. Most days, I had to begrudgingly wake her from her nap.

And so for a while, I had her in bed around 6:30, waking up at 8:30 and napping 12-3. It was beautiful. I remember this time very clearly, and when people would tell me how jealous they were I would often say “yeah we’re really lucky, but she’s definitely not sleeping the whole time. She just doesn’t need us.” And that’s the point of sleep training right? That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Every kid wakes up at night, but the point is to give them the tools to go back to sleep on their own. She had those tools in the form of 6 pacifiers and good genes (she’s an independent woman like her mama). 

Since she didn’t need us, I didn’t really pay all that much attention to how much time she was actually spending awake in her crib at night. I know I told people that Landen would go down at 6:30 or 7 and sleep until 5:30 or 6 and not move an inch in that time, but Joey would play in her crib on and off all night. I just didn’t actually consider how much time she was really awake and what that meant for her sleep needs and circadian rhythm. I didn’t have to think about it. She didn’t need us and she was calm, happy, and thriving.

Until Covid hit…

And then came March 2020. Do you all remember that time in your life? No? You blocked it out? I’m sorry to remind you that that was the beginning of the end of the world. Schools closed, and I was stuck home with 2 toddlers, and getting increasingly more pregnant by the day. And that is when Joey’s late nights began again. Do I come off as the type of person who does late nights in general, let alone while pregnant and parenting toddlers all day? I can say with absolute certainty that I am not that person. 

So what did we do? We once again took that child’s nap away at an incredibly young age. Joey was completely napless at 23 months old. Most kids keep their naps until at least 3, and 3-5 is normal. 23 months is super young, especially for a kid who was previously being woken from a 3 hour nap each day. 

Note: I do not recommend following my lead on any of this. You have to really know your kid and understand sleep needs to do what I did. This would NEVER in a million years have been okay for Landen, or for MOST kids. Feel free to reach out if you have questions.

BUT when we took that nap away, the problem was solved. She was back to going to sleep at 6/630 pm and sleeping through breakfast. These were the days that she’d sometimes still be in her crib as late as 10 or 11 am. We could get her up and dressed and go for a picnic lunch at the only open park in town. This worked better for us in those early Covid days when Landen wasn’t napping anymore and they were really good at entertaining each other, and there was literally NOWHERE to go. 

So yes, sometimes she slept until 10 or 11 am. If she wasn’t up by the time Landen was eating breakfast, my options were to wake her up, which seemed insane when I was dealing with Landen, do breakfast twice (also insane), or let her sleep until lunch. Honestly, if letting her sleep until lunch doesn’t sound like the best option here then I don’t know what is. 

Under no circumstances was she asleep from 6:30 pm - 11 am. That’s just ridiculous. But she was in her crib and she didn’t need us and, again, that’s the whole point of sleep training right? When they need you they call for you, otherwise they self soothe and roll over and go back to sleep without support. So I assumed she was just tacking on the missed nap hours to her night sleep hours and I let it happen. 

Disclaimer: most toddlers do not eat all three meals a day. If you watch your kids as closely as I do (10/10 do not recommend, I’m a psychopath and it’s anxiety inducing), you’d probably notice a pattern. Landen and Graham are big breakfast eaters, Joey is big on dinner. She doesn’t sleep through breakfast anymore, but she still doesn’t really eat it. Everyone’s body works differently and I promise, she was not starving. Girlfriend had a growth spurt that brought her from 5th percentile to 50th during this time.

Anyway, in our old house, Joey’s crib shared a wall with our bedroom, so we always knew that she wasn’t actually sleeping during all of this time in her crib because we heard her night time parties through the walls. I didn’t realize the extent of what was going on while it was happening though.

Enter the beginning of Joey’s Split Nights…

Joey was having what we in the sleep training world call split nights. A split night is when a child is up for a significant amount of time during the night, usually all at one time, and no amount of soothing, comforting, or sleep training will fix the problem. But at the time, it wasn’t a problem. A child who doesn’t need you between the hours of 6 pm and 11 am in the beginning of a global pandemic that closed school AND all of the playgrounds while you are pregnant and dealing with a very needy 3 year old is not a problem (ok yes I just reread that and realized what a hero I am). It is a blessing. Even if that means she’s awake from 12am - 3am every night. If she doesn’t need you, it’s great.

So we let it happen, and we probably let it go on for way too long. But it was working for us, and if something works, you keep it as is. This routine of Joey going to bed early and waking up late but also having split nights almost every night continued on for about 9/10 months. 

In December 2020, we potty trained Joey. I think there are two camps of potty training parents - the ones that night train at the same time by waking the child up 1-2 times a night to go to the bathroom, and the ones that wait until the child wakes up dry to take away nighttime diapers. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that there is basically no circumstance that would lead me to wake a child up in the middle of the night, so for Joey and Landen I waited until they woke up dry on their own. 

This took a while for Landen, so I expected the same with Joey. I was wrong. Joey began waking up to pee in the middle of the night on night two of potty training. This makes sense right? Landen goes to sleep and stays asleep, so naturally his body didn’t tell him to go to the bathroom at night. Joey goes to sleep and parties all night so if you’re awake your body reacts differently of course. But this was getting exhausting because her little bladder certainly couldn’t hold it all night, and we were so tired from waking up to take her to the bathroom every night, sometimes more than once a night. 

And then it all went downhill…fast…

This was when I made the biggest mistake I have ever made in my 5+ years of sleep shenanigans with my three kids. On January 28 2021, about a month after potty training, we converted her crib to a toddler bed. I KNEW kids were not developed enough to understand and be able to sleep in a bed until at least 3, and I KNEW you should never convert a crib to a toddler bed unless the kid was climbing out and you have a safety issue on your hands. Landen didn’t move to a toddler bed until he was close to 4. And yet, Joey was already waking up multiple times a night to pee so what harm could there possibly be in converting her crib right? Miss Independent would just walk herself to the bathroom in the middle of the night and then walk herself back to her bed, and worst case scenario we’d walk her there and back which we were already doing anyway. It couldn’t be worse than it was.

“You don’t know what you’re in for mom…” - Joey

Boy was I wrong. Of course she was still waking up to pee in the middle of the night, and she was 2 so of course she wasn’t just walking herself there. I would’ve been fine with that though. If my two year old needs help going to the bathroom I will of course take her. The issue was that my once super independent sleeper suddenly NEEDED us to help her get back to sleep. She got up, she came to ask to go to the bathroom, I walked her back to her room, and repeat over and over again for 3 hours a night every single night. Not only would she not go back to sleep, she would not even stay in her room. Often, she wouldn’t go back to sleep unless one of us was laying on her floor, or rubbing her head, habits I did NOT want to introduce even though I was desperate for sleep.

8:17 PM Eric is asleep on Joey’s floor. Joey is MIA. This is not uncommon.

10:52 PM Eric is reading Joey books (again).

Joey is still awake at 1:51 AM. This was the same night as the 10:52 PM books. There was no sleep in between.

This was torture. Almost every single night from 11-2, or 12-3, or 1-4, Joey was up and needing us. Landen would then wake up at 5:30 and we were up for the day. And repeat. 

Something HAD to change…

It was during this time that I finally began waking Joey up in the morning, partially because I needed her to sleep at night and partially because she was starting school 2 days a week. I would let her sleep until about 8 at the latest, or around the time Landen was ready for breakfast, to get them to school by 8:45. Obviously after being up for three hours and then being woken up, especially after she was previously allowed to sleep until 11, she was not super happy and was incredibly cranky in the mornings. 

This helped 50% of the time. Seriously, every other night she would sleep, and then the next night she was up for 3 hours. I kept waking her up in the morning hoping it was just taking some time for her to regulate, but it didn’t seem to be happening. I knew that she was sleeping through that middle of the night waking every other night simply because she was exhausted, not because her body was regulating, otherwise she would keep sleeping through it that other 50% of the time. Something was up and I had to figure it out.

Then that March after almost 2 months of these shenanigans, we went to Colorado for our first vacation since Covid began. I was so nervous that we’d all just be exhausted the entire time, but by some miracle Joey slept. I was starting to suspect that maybe it had something to do with the fact that when given the choice to sleep in a bed or crib on vacation, she chose the crib. 

As soon as we got home, the split nights started again. Then on one of those nights after 3 hours of trying to get her back to sleep, in a moment of complete desperation I asked her if she wanted her crib back. Friends, do yourselves a favor and don’t do something like this in the middle of the night. Wait until morning. The relief that went through her body was visible. She told me she needed her crib “RIGHT NOW”. Obviously that wasn’t happening right now, so I laid on her floor, held her hand and helped her back to sleep. The next morning, on March 28, 2 months after her crib was converted, Eric put the side back up.

From that night on, Joey slept all night. She still had an occasional bathroom wake up or an occasional 830 pm party, but she always put herself to sleep or back to sleep with her 6 pacis. It turns out she was really scared of the freedom provided by the toddler bed, and she was developmentally just not ready for it. 

Joey has always been my one kid who was scared of the dark. At a younger age than average, she really needed a night light to get to sleep and stay asleep, and she still does. I didn’t even realize how much of a comfort her crib might've been to her too.

Eventually after a few more months, she began to ask for her toddler bed back. Since we were moving in August, we told her she would get the bed back when we moved. 

By the time we moved, she was almost 3.5, and developmentally more ready for the toddler bed. A few days before we moved, I took the kids to stay with my parents so Eric could handle the move kid free, and we gave Joey a room with both a crib and a bed to stay in. She chose the bed, so I thought she was finally ready. Spoiler: she was more ready but not totally ready. A lot has been going on with Joey’s sleep since we moved, some of which I’ve discussed already on instagram, but look out for part 3 coming soon for all the details!