[BabyRN2Be]

I'm just venting here, so don't mind me. Not that anything big has happened, but I guess I'm just plain aggravated.

Some of you may have noticed some of my late night/early morning time stamps on some of my posts. Out of the blue, I've been having problems sleeping lately, and I can't identify any factors. I've been eliminating caffeine after 3PM, getting exercise during the day, eating foods which help me sleep, and NOTHING helps. This has happened about 3-4 times in the past week.

The first nights it happened I came in here so I wouldn't disturb my dh, and I've logged on here until I got sleepy enough to go back into our bedroom. I had a few nights in which I slept well, and then BOOM! it happened again last night. Well, I did log onto here early this AM, and then felt like I could go back to sleep.

Then, my dog wanted in on the "fun". He came to our bedroom door, shook his collar to wake us up (never fails), he usually tells us he wants "outside" this way. Since I've been the one up, I tell my dh to go back to sleep, I'll take care of Marshall. That being done, I got back into bed. Marshall then comes to the doorway again, indicating that he wants a walk. At 4:00AM. By this time I am dead tired and tell Marshall to go back to sleep. Marshall ignores me, whines, shakes his collar making quite a racket. By this time my dh is awake and offers to play with him a little bit while he himself is half asleep. Marshall calms down and goes back to sleep, just to do the same routine 20 minutes later.

Fast forward to 11AM. I'm trying to sleep, I get a phone call which wakes me up. I can't get back to sleep. Now, I'm dead tired, can't really sleep, I have a class to teach at church tonight and I don't know how to do it besides breaking my caffeine rule.

Just a few minutes ago, my dh called and said to keep Marshall awake, not to let him sleep, because my poor husband has been yawning all day! So, every few minutes, I've been calling out Marshall's name, going in there, ruffling him up a little bit wanting to play, cuz darnit, we need to sleep tonight!!

Yuck. I hate this. I have a class to teach at church tonight which is going to go to about 8:30PM, and my husband has private pilot's ground school (for work) lasting til about the same time. We are both dead tired and it's only 3:30PM.

It's payback time for the dog. If he's not going to let us sleep at night, I'm not going to let him sleep during the day.

Thanks for letting me rant... I'm not being too mean to the dog, I just wanted to make that clear.

I'm rambling, I need sleep.

[TriageRN_34]

I am so sorry about your night! I have many large birds as pets, a new kitten and a dog. Yeah sleep doesn't come easy around here either.

For the most part, my parrots will sleep when it is dark...but sometimes something startles them and we get the squaks for a while. I have learned to tone them out. The kitten likes to play all day and night...so we have had to put him in my step daughters room for "night night" (when she isn't here). Finally he has figured out that night night means sleep, and a treat is sleeping with us!

The dog...rarely do we have a probelm with him anymore! He use to bark at every sound he heard which included a loud barking session if hubby or I moved and lord forbid the headboard hit the wall! Oh he would go nuts and it would take forever to calm him down! We got a training collar for him, yes...the one that shocks on barking (but he was also starting to bark and nip at anyone leaving the house...and my son and hubby got some bloody ankles from it!), now he is quiet and behaved...and we only break out that collar once in a blue moon when he starts falling back into those habits (which happens rarely).

(BTW...the collar I got was one that gives a warning beep, then light shock..more shock...one more...then can't shock for 5 minutes. The dog has only hit first shock twice in 3 years, and that was when he first got the collar, after that the beep does the trick! Bummer though, I will make the beep sound with my voice and it doesn't work..LOL! Naaaa...I love this trick because it worked right off the bat, and if I put the collar on him...he knows not to bark and heck...don't tell him but I haven't put in a new battery in it for a long time...LOL! It just being there works!).

The only advice I have for the dog is to do training like you do for infants. Cuddle for a while to ensure the dog knows you are there and care, but shorten that time and let him bark or whine till he goes back to sleep and eventually that time will shorten. I would certainly NOT be going out for a walk in the middle of the night with him...that is too much for my schedule...but perhaps switching to a late night walk before bed? Also get a good potty schedule and stick to it (like during the late night walks...use your commands like "go potty"...or as my mom would say "okay...do your thing!".

I am sure others will have other tricks of the trade here, but for me these have worked wonderfully!

[JentheRN05]

I remember when my oldest was 3 or 4. He thought it would be cute to keep us up all night one night. He had ADHD so he would come running in our room and run on the bed. Nothing would calm him.
So - we as parents did get even. The next day we had to go to my parents. On the way there he started to fall asleep as he always did in the car. We were determined to get sleep that night so we prohibited any napping. Know how???
The puddles. You ask - what are the puddles?
Whenever he would start to doze off - I'd quickly roll down my window and toss a little bit of water on him.
Blamed it on the puddles. He got so made at the 'puddles' that he was yelling 'stop it puddles - I want to sleep'. We never did let him sleep that day and that night we got some rest. Thank goodness.
It's funny looking back on it. But at the time - we were at our wits end and very loopy. That's what we came up with.
It would've been different if he were really little of course. But he had been sleeping through the night since he was 9 months old and this was out of the blue. Actually thinking back - he did this two nights in a row, thats why we ended up taking doing the 'puddles' thing. It's been 13 - 14 years since then - he doesn't remember me being married to my exhusband (his acting father not biological) but he remembers the puddles. I was divorced when he was 2 and he had visitation until he was 5. It's funny he remembers the puddles but not some guy who pretended to be his father for the first 5 years of his life.