Since Ethan turned about 18months he has been having difficulty falling asleep at night. It takes him at least an hour to fall asleep no matter how early or late he goes down. I initially thought it was because of the time change and that he was having trouble sleeping because it was still light out. Then he started to do the same at his nap time. For a while I thought it was because he was overtired and couldn’t settle down to sleep. He always nearly falls asleep in the car at about 11am so I started trying to put him down for his nap earlier but that didn’t work he still jumped up and down for an hour or more before falling asleep. This past weekend he went several days without a nap at all and was so difficult to be around by about fivepm. I knew he still needed a nap so this week I’ve been trying to put him down later and later until I found a time that works. The past few days he’s gone down at 1:30 and it’s only taken him 15min. to fall asleep. I feel bad that it took me this long to figure it out. Our other problem is during the past month or so he’s been waking up crying several times throughout the night, every night. It doesn’t sound like his night terrors (unless he has changed his cry because his night terror cry was horrifying) so I don’t know if he is having nightmares or what. I guess I have some research to do.
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Sorry to hear about your little Ethan. My Ethan went through the same thing. We have a black lab that we ended up sticking in Ethan’s room at night. The dog licks Ethan’s face anytime he starts crying and that keeps him calm. On a bad night the two sleep together. “Missy” seems to have solved most of our problems with nighttime sleep.