Landen’s sleep story part 2.5 - why mom must put him to bed
As you probably already know, I was obsessed with sleep since before Landen was born. I realized pretty early on that a bedtime routine and ideal sleep environment were critical for sleep, especially for Landen who was extra sensitive to these things even as an infant. What I didn’t realize, though, was that even though his routine would evolve over the years (as all routines do as kids grow), his desperate need for me to put him to bed would not change.
Were there things I could have done earlier on that would have helped the situation? Probably. Would it have been perfect? Absolutely not. He’s pretty “strong willed” according to the second therapist that fired us because he couldn’t get through to him, so I’m not sure if things would’ve changed. Here’s the story of how this became a thing and why we are still in this position today.
Landen’s Routine
Landen’s routine was established way before he could comprehend what was going on. Bottle, bath, rockabye baby, goodnight moon, swaddle → merlin → sleep sack (depending on age), sound machine on, in bed, lights out. This was quick and easy, and it was something I could definitely clearly explain to anyone who was putting Landen to bed.
Our first bedtime babysitter experience
When Landen was 6 months old, we had our first non family babysitter at bedtime. We had such a great routine going. We simply do those few things to wind him down before bed, place him in his crib, and walk out. He might whine a bit but usually was asleep within minutes. I explained it all to the babysitter in detail. I couldn’t imagine anything could go wrong. I was incredibly off base here.
We could see Landen’s crib from our phones, and we could see that instead of sleeping he was screaming his head off. I very confidently told this babysitter that Landen was super easy at bedtime. Sing that song, read that book, put him down and walk out. He’ll go right to sleep and sleep all night without issue. I’m so sorry that I did this to that poor babysitter. This kid would. Not. stop. Screaming. Of course she was doing anything she could to calm him, and we were trying to communicate with her to tell her to just leave him for a minute, but rightfully she was focused on the screaming baby and not her phone.
Honestly, I know it’s hard to listen to a screaming kid, and it’s probably especially hard to listen to a screaming kid who you’re being paid to put to sleep, so I understand why she did what she did. I do think that if she walked out and gave him just a few minutes, he might have gone to sleep more easily, but this was not her fault and paying attention to a screaming kid you’re paid to watch is never the wrong call. I will never know for sure though if her walking out might’ve worked, but I do know that that was the start of Landen’s separation anxiety.
Sleepover at Grandma’s House
A few months later, Landen had his first sleepover with Eric’s mom. She just took him for the night so we could go out for dinner and have a night to relax.
We did not relax.
Landen’s bedtime was 6 for a very very long time. At 8:30 when he was still awake and screaming on the other side of the phone that a very overwhelmed grandma called us from, I was not at all relaxed. Even Eric who really doesn’t care at all when bedtime happens was not relaxed. Nothing grandma did would get this kid to sleep. I have very different sleep philosophies than Eric’s parents, and I do think she was probably trying to rock him to sleep and maybe he just wanted to be left alone (sense a trend here?), but it’s also probably true that he was beginning to really understand when mom and dad weren’t present but also mostly when his environment was different.
At this point, as you can imagine, I began to realize that it was easier for me to just do it. Of course this is partially my fault and in hindsight maybe something I could’ve worked on and practiced, but Landen’s bedtime was 6 pm. That was certainly early enough for me to put him to bed and then go out if I wanted to go out. And at that time, it wasn’t just me who could put him to bed. Eric was totally acceptable as well, so I got frequent breaks from the bedtime routine. I found it to be way less stressful for us to do it ourselves.
From then on whenever we had a babysitter, we made sure to put Landen to bed before we left. Whenever we traveled or stayed with grandparents, we made sure to put Landen to bed ourselves. This worked really well for us. There was less stress and still plenty of adult relaxation time after bedtime.
Landen was and still is incredibly sensitive to environment
We also realized naps were not happening without me or Eric putting him down, and they also weren’t happening somewhere else. Fortunately though, Landen has always been an expert car/stroller napper, so rather than stress all day if he was left with someone else, we’d just have them take him for a walk or something around nap time.
This was easier for us, and it worked. And it worked for a long time.
And then when Landen was 18 months old, Joey was born.
At first, things were fine. Joey was a newborn and newborns don’t go to sleep at normal kid time so Joey just sort of chilled with mommy or daddy, or sometimes even by herself in a swing or something, while we did Landen’s bedtime routine.
Sometime that summer though, something shifted. Joey was beginning to sleep through the night and she was now going to be part of the bedtime routine every night. They took their baths together and then we’d each take one kid to do books and songs and sleep.
The night that everything changed…
Then one night we were away with family sleeping in a house that was not his own, and Landen woke up in the middle of the night. Prior to this night, Eric handled almost every middle of the night waking before 3-4 AM for the first 22 months of Landen’s life, and the first 4 months of Joey’s life. So when Landen woke up crying a little after midnight Eric went in to check on him and see what he needed, assuming it was just his normal “hey people this isn’t my bed remind me that I’m safe” wake up.
But the screams did not stop. He just kept screaming for mommy for 30+ minutes. Eric tried everything he could to calm him down to avoid waking me up because he knew Landen would probably be up again for the day before 5 as he often was when not at home, but nothing worked. Eventually I woke up from the screaming and went to see what was going on.
Landen was back asleep within seconds. I mean, literally seconds.
I don’t know what happened that night but something switched in Landen. Yes, he always had a preference for me and yes he has always been ultra sensitive to his sleep environment but he was always okay with dad at bedtime or in the middle of the night. That night, though, he was desperate for me.
But it wasn’t a one night thing. It continued when we got home. Landen is a great sleeper and he rarely wakes up in the middle of the night, but if he did, he needed me. Eric would go in and try to calm him down and he would just scream louder.
So picture this scene: toddler won’t stop screaming with dad. Mom walks in and toddler stops screaming instantly, requests a hug and kiss, and goes back to sleep for the rest of the night. There is a baby sleeping soundly in the next room, literally sharing a wall.
Do you:
A - let the kid keep screaming until he learns that dad is fully capable of taking care of him, while continuing to “validate his feelings” as the internet says you should
B - let the kid keep screaming until dad can’t take it anymore or until he wakes the baby and mom has to get involved somehow anyway
C - dad wakes up mom and mom calms the kid down immediately and everyone goes right back to sleep
You know the answer to a multiple choice question is ALWAYS C.
So we started our new routine of mom deals with Landen and dad deals with Joey
So we fell into this habit of me dealing with Landen in the middle of the night. This quickly evolved into a bedtime thing too. Landen would. Not. go. To. sleep. At ALL. Unless I was the one to do his routine. Now I have always been interested in sleep, and I knew all the right things to do, so this obviously wasn't an issue. His routine was easy. Short and sweet. So we developed a pattern of everyone having dinner together, everyone having a bath together, and mommy would put Landen to sleep while daddy would put Joey to sleep. Everyone was mostly happy and calm and things were running smoothly. It was the perfect set up for two kids under two with the same bedtime.
As Joey got a little older, I began to see the true impact of Landen’s anxiety around bedtime. For the first almost two years of his life, if we ever wanted a grandparent or a babysitter to watch him while we went for dinner we always put him to bed at 6 and told the babysitter to arrive at 6:30. He almost never woke up, and if he did it definitely wasn’t between the hours of 7-10, so for a kid who was anxious about mom being gone it seemed easier to just not be gone, at least in his mind. I was there when he went to bed, I was there when he woke up, and what happened in between didn’t matter.
We actually even told babysitters that if he woke up they would make it worse if they entered the room and he would become an actual demon child until he saw my face, so they should just let him cry for a few minutes and call me so I could immediately return home. I know this is not the best method, but it literally NEVER happened, not one time not ever. He never woke up while we were out and we never got that call. This was the best possible solution to handle his general anxiety and my bedtime anxiety.
But Joey was different.
Her sleep habits were and still are much harder to figure out. But one thing that was true was that she did not always go right to sleep at bedtime and she did not always stay asleep. I could not in good conscience put her to bed and then leave knowing she might wake up to a stranger trying to get her back to bed. So we started having babysitters come around 5 so they could meet the kids and play a little before bedtime. Still though, we always put them to bed before leaving because I didn’t want to face the disaster of trying to have someone else put Landen to sleep and the next day full of meltdowns that would result from him getting less sleep.
If you have a kid who refuses to let anyone, even dad, put him to sleep but you also have a kid who likes to party in her crib at night do you:
A - pretend you’re not even going out and just put him to sleep before the babysitter even gets there, knowing that this might be a scary (and quite frankly unfair) situation for baby sister
B - try to teach him that he’s safe with a babysitter and have the babysitter put him to sleep knowing the disaster that might ensue and knowing said babysitter will probably never come back
C - put him to sleep at his very early bedtime and then enjoy a night out without children and without worry
C people. Always C.
The anxiety will always be a barrier though…
To be honest though, it wasn’t always that simple. Landen’s anxiety was real and deep. He still did not want us going out even if we put him to bed first. If he saw me wearing jeans instead of pajamas he would start to get visibly anxious about where I was going and what would happen while he was sleeping.
When babysitters came he always made me promise he’d be asleep before we left and we’d be back before he was up. He always woke up in the middle of the night, and still does (which if you recall is not normal behavior for him in general) to check that I was back home. He was clearly anxious and it might take a little longer for bedtime with extra hugs and kisses, but in the end he was still always asleep by 6/630 and we were always still able to go out and relax by 7. To me, this process was worth it and much easier than the process of trying to change the behavior.
And then, as we all may recall, Covid happened.
This meant that there was nowhere to go. There was no reason that I wouldn’t be home to put Landen to bed and there was no chance that a babysitter or grandparent would be able to come in and do it. So as you can imagine, we got ourselves deeper into a hole of no one being able to put Landen to bed except me. But again, this was totally fine because I also had nowhere to go and I knew that if I put Landen to bed I could quickly get through his routine and he’d sleep all night. If I tried to mess with that it caused complete and utter chaos. And you know what coincided with Covid lockdowns? Me being pregnant.
So what do you do if you’re pregnant and exhausted and stuck home with a 2 year old and a 3 year old during an unprecedented and seemingly never ending pandemic?
A - try to change the behavior by switching off bedtime with dad
B - I don’t have anything to write here because we literally had nowhere to go ever but the answer should be C
C - keep putting Landen to bed while dad keeps putting Joey to bed to ensure that everyone is in bed by 7 after the long tedious early Covid days
C. Duh.
Fast forward 1 year. We’ve gotten through 6 months of no school and no camp and no grandparents and no babysitters and nowhere to go. School’s about to start up again and we’ve hired an amazing babysitter that the kids love and we’re getting back into a really good routine. Then we get through another 6 months of semi-normal life and my family is meeting in Philly for a special dinner that we bought at a fundraiser and had to reschedule many times due to Covid. I asked the babysitter who I trusted and who my kids loved so much to babysit that night. It would be the first time a babysitter would put Landen to sleep (both Joey and Graham have been put down for naps by babysitters and put back down after waking up at night while we were out many times without issue - this is purely a firstborn problem).
Landen’s first babysitter bedtime…
I prepped Landen for this day for weeks. He was excited to show his babysitter his routine and he was ready for this. He even made a checklist to check off everything that would happen before sleep. I decided to let go of whatever happened. He was 4.5 years old at this point so if things were off that would be just fine.
Things were off. He didn’t go to sleep until 8:30 which is very late for him, despite our babysitter's best efforts. He did wake up in the middle of the night to come check on me and make sure we made it home. But it was worth it. It wasn’t a disaster. He let her put him to sleep without a fight, he just required a little more play time and books and songs. We were finally on our way to changing the behavior.
Or so I thought.
And then we moved…
A lot of things started to change after that night. First, our babysitter unfortunately couldn’t be with us anymore. Second, we moved, and then two weeks later got our floors redone, and then a week after that got carpets installed, and then a week after that started a 6 month long construction project. The anxiety around all of the changes and the sensory response to the construction was enough to really impact Landen’s day to day experience. He was really regressing and needed me to be by his side at all times.
This was evident when Eric’s mom was up visiting and offered to babysit so we could go out for dinner. At that point I don’t think we’d been out without kids in like 6 months, but definitely not since before the move. I figured this wouldn’t be an issue at all. Grandma is Landen’s favorite person, and I’d still put him to bed before going out.
And this was all a complete disaster.
He wouldn’t let me leave even though he knew he was safe and grandma was downstairs. He just kept screaming and crying and holding on to me for dear life. Finally after 45 minutes of both of us cuddled and crying together, he was getting really tired and he told me he needed me to stay with him until he was fully asleep (something I literally NEVER do). We didn’t get to dinner until 8:15 that night which is way past my desired dinner time.
The last few months have been hard. The anxiety of everything going on in the house has died down. The anxiety of starting a new camp and starting kindergarten and, quite honestly, sharing a room at Disney World last week, have all spiked. I spend all day every day thinking about little changes I can make to help Landen overcome some of his fears, anxieties, and OCD behaviors. I make changes to his morning routine and endure meltdowns. I make changes to his after school routines and endure meltdowns. I drive a different direction or give him bread with crust on or tell him his red pants are dirty, and endure meltdowns. These things are real and legitimate fears and anxieties for him. These are also real and legitimate moments that I feel capable of working on helping him.
And you know what? I am not a generally anxious person but I do have sleep anxiety. This is my weakness. When bedtime doesn’t go as planned or my kids or I get less sleep than we need I have a much harder time staying calm and quite frankly, enduring the daytime meltdowns. So this situation is not something I am willing or able to fix at this time. There will come a time where I have to be somewhere at bedtime and we’ll face that when it comes, but until then our routine works for us and I’m not ready to make this one change because for Landen’s anxious little brain, it’s the biggest and scariest change there is. I’m going to work on what I can and find a good therapist before messing with the bedtime routine.
PS - if I am not present, Eric can put Landen to bed without issue. I’m not completely tied to my house at bedtime. It's just really hard if we are both gone, and I’m the one that gets the brunt of it if that’s the case.