Big Bed Transition: The First Week
So how is it going, you ask?
Oh. You know.
With one night’s exception (Monday), it’s been a trial every night. No less than 2 hours is spent re-directing her back to her bed at 1-3 minute intervals. Sometimes we’ve played it stern, sometimes bored, sometimes gentle. Sometimes we’ve gone to bed so that she’ll see that everyone’s sleeping. Every night we’ve broken down and tried bribes like extra books or special toys. We’ve gone through the motions of the bed-time ritual to try and re-set her attitude and calm her down. In short, we’ve tried “everything”.
Nothing really works. She has entirely too much fun throwing herself dramatically on the bed, waiting for us to leave and shut the door, then running back out to us as fast as she can shuffle around obstacles and across the hardwood floor. It’s never not a game to her, even when we’re mad. Then she just yells at us whatever we just said as she runs back into her room. It is awesome.
At some point every night, we enter the “danger zone.” She gets so tired that she gets clumsy and doesn’t zig or zag as cleanly as she could, or stumbles to the ground or bumps her jaw/head on some part of the bed when she’s being all dramatical. We’ve been trying to avoid this period by getting her to calm down, which is usually when the game changes. One night, she and Ryan watched Tinkerbell until 11:30 and then the completely fatigued baby was much less interested in getting out of bed and fell asleep. Another night, I sat on the edge of her bed and sang songs until she stopped getting up and started snuggling. A third night, Ryan managed to get her calm and sleepy with only a half-hour of TV. These were all last-resort options, because we don’t want to make a habit of any of them. They were only pulled out once we’d reached the point where we were exhausted and she was dangerously tired.
Last night was pretty much the same thing, except I started the calming/resting part a bit earlier and instead of singing, I crawled into her bed myself and started reading her favorite books. The rule was, if she was in the bed too (there was room), I would read aloud. Otherwise, I’d read to myself. At one point she snuck around behind me to catch a glimpse of the book and climbed up onto the lip of wood that frames the mattress. Standing on the bed is a big no-no, and has been for a while. Like I always do when she’s standing on our bed, I reached around behind me and wrapped my arm around the back of her knees to pull her down. She’s supposed to fall onto me and right next to me, which I thought there was room for, even on her tiny bed.
Instead, likely because we’d reached the danger zone of clumsiness and because at 2, she shouldn’t be expected to compensate for the change in space from our bed to hers, and because I was sleepy too, and not at my clear-thinking best, she fell straight across the bed. Most of her landed on the mattress (and me), but her forehead crash landed on the wooden lip of the bed frame. This is not the same thing as falling on a protruding headboard or bed rail. This was a flat surface about 3 inches wide that is usually flush with the mattress. In other words, it could have been much worse.
Immediately following the crash, we went into action. There were tears and screams and frantic grabs for ice packs. Most importantly, there was an an ever-increasing welt growing on her forehead. Two panicked parents got dressed and in the car as quickly as possible and sprinted through the rain to Children’s Hospital which was (thankfully) very near by. Before we got even halfway there, the crying had ceased except when we tried to put the super-cold ice on the welt and the welt had stopped increasing in size (but was turning a sickening shade of blue). She was sleepy, but at that time we weren’t sure if it was “I hit my head” sleepy or “it’s 10:00pm and I’m extremely tired” sleepy. We did everything we could to keep her engaged and as we pulled up to the emergency room, she was timidly singing along with “Old Mac Donald.” For the first time since it started, we started to believe that eventually everything was going to be okay.
And it turns out we were right. After being checked out by a very friendly group of ER staff, it was determined that she was totally cool. She hadn’t passed out, she hadn’t thrown up, and her eyes were dilating normally. Before we left, she was back to her normal “It’s 11pm and I’m super sleepy” self. She chatted, played with the activity wall in the room, and shuffled around from Mom to Dad every time someone new came in. She performed all high-fives and “you should see the other guy” echos requested of her. The staff sent us home with a list of signs to look for and the task of checking on her every few hours overnight. Today she’s been on the sluggish and sleepy side, but that has more to do with not getting enough sleep last night than anything else. We’ve had other days like this, so I’m not worried about it being “abnormal behavior.”
This certainly has an effect on the “big girl bed” landscape, however.
Our new plan of attack is multi-phased. The first phase is not even asking her to go to bed until she’s super-sleepy and interested in staying there. Even if it means staying up until 10:30 every night and watching late-night children’s programming to keep her calm. The theory is that this will encourage the “go to bed and stay there” concept. Once she seems to “get it”, we’ll start slowly bumping the bed time back up to a normal time. This may mean no naps in the mean time, since getting her to sleep during the day has also proved fruitless. Today, sleepy as she was, she entertained herself with her books for about 10 minutes before deciding she was done.
If this doesn’t take, it’s back to the drawing board. Putting her back in the crib won’t work. Now that she’s seen life outside those walls, she refuses to go back.
Tags: big girl bed, ER visit, goose eggs, transitions