18 mth old crying in night neighbours complaining??

hngrymummy

OP, it just occured to me what this reminded me of.

My niece's grandad died last year. She's only 3, and was too young to visit him in hospital (lots of wires, drips etc, and he was very ill so not a good environment for her to go to). All she knew was that one day her favourite grandad was there and the next he was gone and not coming back. She refused to let he mum out of her sight for ages after that as she thought that the same might happen to her.

If you were in hospital a lot with your baby, then she could still have a panic about you disappearing and not coming back. She would've been too young to understand why you weren't around so it would've been confusing and a bit frightening for her. She may need a lot of reassurance, like my niece did, that you are still going to be around in the morning. My niece only panics now if her mum goes to the Drs or to hospital, so it is possible to work trough it.

brians_daughter

ok,Not read all teh replies but you could have been us about 12 months ago! Our (then)16m wouldnt settle and would wake every 1-2 hours and scream the place down.. like your neighbours ours werent sympathetic..but to honest i couldnt bare to listen to him screaming night in night out so i felt for them a little.

If your old routine worked for you then go back to it... your HV is right, you do deserve time to yourself but there are other ways to do it. We used to put him down at 9.30 which seemed to work well for him as he slept better but didnt work well for us as he was going to bed and we were about 10 mins behind him!

We went back to old routine is 9.30 bedtime and reduced it by 15 mins each week..so week 1 it was 9.30, week 2 it was 9.15, week 3 it was 9pm and so on. We also woke him 15 mins earlier when we changed his bedtime. It was a long process but did work (in the whole)

re neighbours we nipped it in teh bud before it escalated to banging on walls. we knew they were unhappy as they had complained to oh's mum (who knows them vaugley) they pretended they didnt know we were related and said how noisey teh baby next door was etc and they were fed up of all teh noise and sleepless nights..so we went round and i took a bottle of wine and just told them of the issues we were having and we couldnt imagine how they felt as we struggled and it was our child etc..it actually worked wonders, witin a week the wife was nipping round with things like lavender bath oil for the baby 'to help him sleep' and was forever giving us 'tips' (ok, one of them was to pop whiskey in his bottle lol!) we just nodded and looked pelased and said we would deffo look into it. We also explained we had tried to put him in the furthest room away from them etc and we were trying to keep the noise down as much as possible

Controlled crying does work for the majority babies in less than 10 days, so you could maybe say to them you are going to try it again but it may be a hairy 10 days but you just wanted to warn them etc. BUT once you start dont back track..no matter how tired you are, it just gives baby the signals that crying gets them what they want and does it even more (even though you thought no more crying was possible!)

Hugs and ii hope you sort it out with them, the last thing you need is a neighbour fall out at such a difficult time x

Katie-Kat-Kins

I saw Jo Frost do a thing where she had the mum sit by the bed initially until the child was asleep and when the child was happy and coping with going to bed and going to sleep with the mum sitting by the bed, she would then sit accross the room, and then when that was ok by the door and then she'd go into another upstairs room until the child got used to going to sleep by herself after the usual nighttime routine.

I can see how it would work, as you would be able to help calm the child before it got to het up as you would be close and also would prevent her getting so wound up she can't sleep. The gradual increase sounds very sensible too, most children don't actually lie awake in bed for long, the battle is to get them to lie down quietly.

I guess the worst thing would be getting bored waiting for her to calm down and go to sleep of her own accord - guess you'd need a good book.

I'd also make sure you have a really rocksolid bedtime routine that you use all the time. It worked so well for my nephew, and it was never a battle getting him bed because he knew what was coming. He did bath, then got dried and into his pyjamas, then had some milk, then a story lying in bed before lying down and lights out, the time was strictly adhered to so his bodyclock got used to it too.

elff

Same situation with us.. we have twins and a 4 yr old..... we get maybe 1 full night of sleep a week if were lucky. one of the twins just screams alot.... he is having hospital tests but no results yet

Neighbours have 'threatened' us with enviomental health - reported us to social services and called the police for a domestic disterbunce. I have tried contless times to explain their is a problem and suguesting that them banging on walls/or jumping up and down only wakes up the other kids and makes the noise louder... my poor 4yr old is so shattered she can barley drag herself along to school in the morning

We live in a 2 bed flat so have upstairs and neighbours to one side and a diagonal...

I now have the added fun of trying to time when i put the kids to bed in with upstairs wii fitt that goes on for a hour.... and the idiots across the road from us who have erected a flood ligh so they can work on their cars at night.... flood light shines directley into kids window. honestley I have no idea what to do.

asquiths_2

Her screams are quite unbearable for us so i deffinately do feel for the neighbours.

We are going back to our old routine as of tonight and are going to reduce it by 15 mins as the other poster suggested.

I think since the neighbours have started this banging nonsense its caused more stress as i was panicing when they were doing it and getting stressed which must be showing to our dd. I agree there is a deffinate link between the stay in hospital and her routine breaking.

My emotions are all over the place at the min so i think its best i send a letter to start with. I feel sorry for them one minute then angry for their lack of understanding the next, then guilty for disturbing them the next, then keep thinking they must think we are terrible parents for letting her cry!!

Am off to asda now for some baby bedtime bath might put some in dd's bath aswell!! lol

Thank you for your support

WestonDave

elff wrote: »

Same situation with us.. we have twins and a 4 yr old..... we get maybe 1 full night of sleep a week if were lucky. one of the twins just screams alot.... he is having hospital tests but no results yet....................

I now have the added fun of trying to time when i put the kids to bed in with upstairs wii fitt that goes on for a hour.... and the idiots across the road from us who have erected a flood ligh so they can work on their cars at night.... flood light shines directley into kids window. honestley I have no idea what to do.

Re the floodlight - nip in Shaws and get blackout linings for the curtains - they hang from the current curtain hook fixings and only cost a few quid per pair and don't involve any drilling etc. An alternative if its your place is to get a blackout quality roller blind and put that behind the curtains, but you'd need to fix that to the walls which may not be possible in a rental. The added bonus is that the kids go to sleep earlier and wake later when the daylight gets longer!

Katie-Kat-Kins

WestonDave wrote: »

Re the floodlight - nip in Shaws and get blackout linings for the curtains - they hang from the current curtain hook fixings and only cost a few quid per pair and don't involve any drilling etc. An alternative if its your place is to get a blackout quality roller blind and put that behind the curtains, but you'd need to fix that to the walls which may not be possible in a rental. The added bonus is that the kids go to sleep earlier and wake later when the daylight gets longer!

I was going to suggest the same.

I had a blackout blind for years and they really work. It has been proven that light while you are trying to sleep is bad for you so it is worth getting them for all the bedrooms. Never again will you be woken at dawn because it is getting light!

The only downside is that you may start sleeping through til lunchtime!

LMCD

asquiths wrote: »

Her screams are quite unbearable for us so i deffinately do feel for the neighbours.

We are going back to our old routine as of tonight and are going to reduce it by 15 mins as the other poster suggested.

I think since the neighbours have started this banging nonsense its caused more stress as i was panicing when they were doing it and getting stressed which must be showing to our dd. I agree there is a deffinate link between the stay in hospital and her routine breaking.

My emotions are all over the place at the min so i think its best i send a letter to start with. I feel sorry for them one minute then angry for their lack of understanding the next, then guilty for disturbing them the next, then keep thinking they must think we are terrible parents for letting her cry!!

Am off to asda now for some baby bedtime bath might put some in dd's bath aswell!! lol

Thank you for your support

chocolate and a good cry will help you relieve your emotions esp after the panic with the meningitis... *hugs!*

borokat

I think given that the neighbours are students it is quite likely they have no experience of the trials of trying to get a young child to sleep. So that's where the lack of understanding comes from.
I would find it hard to cope with personally and I think you owe them an explanation which will hopefully smooth things over.
As I'm not a parent I can't offer any advice on sleeping techniques I'm afraid!

money_honey

I've been on both sides re neighbours - there is nothing worse when you are exhausted and cannot sleep than noise coming from next door, generally in the night you're not in the best of moods either! Anyway as there is nothing you can do about it at the moment, definitely just explain to them about the crying. I find that a face to face talk can help to smooth things over.

Regarding the actual crying, have you looked into seeing a cranial osteopath? My daughter used to cry and cry and wouldn't get to sleep til around midnight every night so we finally took her to a cranial osteopath and she sleeps so well now. She had 2 sessions and the difference was amazing! She now sleeps 8 -7:30 most nights which is fantastic - no more tired child or parents and we get to relax in the evenings!