You know about Occam’s Razor? In my own words, it’s basically that between two options the one with the fewer assumptions, the simpler solution, is better. Oh, if only I had applied this principle months ago to the little dudes’ sleep issues.

You see, we’ve been in toddler sleep hell for about 3 months. For a couple weeks prior to the boys’ two-year well child check, their sleep had been pretty off. Elliot especially was having a hard time. It would take him much longer to fall asleep or he would wake up in the middle of the night and just be awake for a couple of hours. At their appointment, we brought up the sleep issues, talked about their allergy meds and slightly increased the dosage, explored their language development and all the other typical things that happen at these appointments. Our pediatrician thought their sleep cycles had just gotten a little off and recommended we use liquid melatonin for no more than 4-6 weeks to help reset their circadian rhythms. We started using the melatonin, and it was like a dream. They were actually tired at bed time. They went right to sleep. They slept like beautiful little angels all night long, and their parents rejoiced. Then, the day came when we had to say goodbye to our magic sleep potion. And, friends, it was bad. So, so bad. That very first night both boys took a full two hours to fall asleep.  They didn’t fall asleep until about 10 p.m., after many trips into check dirty diapers, tell them to lay down, tell them to stop jumping in their cribs, etc., etc. The next day went the same: it took a full two hours for them to calm down enough to finally fall asleep even though we knew they were exhausted. They acted happy and hyper and they just could not fall asleep no matter what.

Thus, started the next two months of trying bloody everything to get them to go to sleep. We moved naps earlier. We cut naps to an hour. We moved bedtime earlier. We moved bedtime later. We made our bedtime routine even more specific and added an extra song to really give them a chance to relax before laying them down. We went into the room to tell them they had to lay down and not talk. We stayed out of the room in hopes that the lack of our “visits” would keep them from getting worked up again. I googled “2-year sleep regression.” I googled “toddler sleep.” I reread the toddler sleep sections from every sleep book we have. Nothing worked. Nothing even fazed them. No matter what, it took at least two hours to go to sleep. We started putting them to bed as early as we can so they would hopefully be asleep before it was too late. Even so, seven o’clock was about the earliest we could get them to bed, so they were always going to sleep an hour late, best case scenario. The loss of sleep built up until all of us were hating life every day. Mr. Blue kept asking if I wanted to go back to work because I was so stressed out by the end of the day every day. I kept telling him I knew this was just a phase and that I would be much happier when my days weren’t filled with two toddlers who were absolutely exhausted and therefore, whiney and tantrumy every single day. Not only were my days stressful and exhausting, but the two hour stretch of trying to get them to sleep kept me on edge all evening, too.

ADVERTISEMENT

Last week, my brother and his family met us at my parents for a weekend at the ranch.  The boys did their typical thing the first night.  The second night was just awful. It took Elliot his normal 2 hours to sleep, but it took Finn even longer and he was crying and calling for us off and on for the entire time. This led to several discussions amongst all the grown ups about what the heck was going on. Having had this conversation with my parents and brother already, my sister-in-law and I started talking about it. She was asking questions and I explained about the appointment, the melatonin, the horible weeks after, all the things we had tried. After we finished talking about it, I went off to get ready for bed since the big boys were finally asleep.  In my head, I kept thinking about how weird it was that they had gone from always going to sleep easily to just not being able to sleep. That’s when the thought popped into my head. Surely, surely, it couldn’t be the medicine change. The boys have taken Zyrtec in the morning and evening for almost all their lives, and it’s never been a problem. We only increased the dose by one milliliter in the evening. That’s nothing. Nothing. There’s no way that could be it. We had also started giving them a vitamin around the same time, but I couldn’t imagine that would do anything either.

I went back out and voiced my thoughts to my mom and sister-in-law. We talked about how we give them their other allergy medicine (a nose spray) in the morning because I knew that kept my dad awake, but that surely such a tiny increase in the night time medicine wouldn’t do the trick. Just in case, I decided to give them the full dose of Zyrtec in the morning along with their vitamin. I did just that and the next night I put them to bed . . . and they went right to sleep. It could have been a fluke, though, so I waited to form an opinion. The next night, they went right to sleep again. And again the next night. Three nights in a row wasn’t enough to convince me, though, because we were still at my parents’ house, so last night was my real test as we had returned home. Like the other three nights, they were asleep within minutes of us leaving their room.

Baby and toddler sleep is such a mysterious thing in which nothing works for everyone and things happen at different times for each kid that I get caught up in trying to “figure it out,” when we have an issue. It must be a regression or a schedule issue or some other mysterious problem to solve. I get so caught up in it that I apparently miss the simplest solution, that I forget to make the least assumptions first. The first thing I should have done was think about if anything had changed and take that factor away to see if it helped, but that literally never entered my mind.

Perhaps the next time we go into a round of baby or toddler sleep Hades, I’ll remember to apply Occam’s Razor to the problem before I dive into the worm hole of regressions, schedules, and standing on my head to get my kids to sleep.  Probably not . . . but perhaps.