Haven has slept in her own bed since day 1 and has only slept with us if she is sick or most recently through that first horrible storm we had. She has gone through a few times of crying over the past 2.5 years, but we would just let her cry it out for a few nights and then things were back to normal. She has taken pretty good naps as well. She would always wake up happy from the night and sometimes cry when she woke up from naps, but overall I would say she was a good sleeper.
Jovie was born at the end of February and Jeremy had 12 weeks off. We tried to keep Haven's schedule as normal as possible. We prepared her for the baby and tried to make it special, but we didn't force potty training or a big girl bed since she was not really interested or seemed ready for either. The first 10 weeks or so went great. She threw a few fits and wanted some attention, but we seemed to get past that fairly quickly. Then we had those bad storms and she got worried about noises that sound like thunder. So we have been talking about that and made her a noise book with pictures of things she hears and she likes that.
The week before Jeremy went back to work Haven started screaming and crying before bed and nap. She finally would cry herself to sleep after we sat by her bed or door for a while to reassure her that everything was okay. Funny thing, she wakes up from bed and nap just as upset when she sees that we are gone. Even if she slept 11 hours she still has woke up screaming and crying. During these last 3 weeks she still naps and sleeps the whole night they are just prefaced with crying. Sometimes the crying has lasted 1.5 hours at night.
She even cried her eyes when Jeremy's mom came to pick her up to go to their house. She usually jumps in their car without wanting to tell us goodbye. She said she wanted to stay with me.
She can't tell us why she is crying. She just screams NO and I want Daddy or Momma. She has said she hears noises too, so we reassure her that we are close and that she is safe.
She has been in her new room since January and has no problems with being upstairs in her new crib.
We thought that just being consistent with our normal night routine (bath, milk, stories, prayer) would work, but now we are on week 3 and last night was the worse.
We decided to give the toddler bed a try. She napped in it yesterday after tears and me sitting at her door for 1 hour on and off. Last night she laid in it fine as long as one of us was by the door and then she screamed, cried, and was at the gate ready to come sleep with us. At 10:45ish we finally put her back in the crib and she went to sleep in about 5 minutes. However, she woke up at 5am screaming. Jeremy tried to get her back to sleep, but now it is 7am and she just crashed on the couch.
We tried giving her new music to listen to at night, a new book, our physical presence and nothing is working.
We were hoping not to add any new habits to our night time routine because it has worked for 2.5 years, but obviously its changed.
She loves the baby and hadn't seemed extremely affected by it all until now.
Any suggestions? Please!
