Desperately need sleep help 3 kids

I have a fantastic sleep consultant I worked with! She can definitely help and is super kind and experienced. She would say it’s definitely not too late. I’d be happy to intro you if interested! She does a first free consult so might be good to see if she’s a good fit for you and your family. 

I hear you and feel you. I was in your situation for many years. I'm sorry that I don't have a suggestion for sleep training. We tried sleep training for unsuccessfully and then abandoned the ship. I co-slept with the kid which was the only way everyone could get sufficient amount of sleep. (My husband slept alone because he has an unconventional schedule like yours.) 

If felt that I might have been able to make sleep training work if I could take 2 - 3 weeks off of work and just focus on sleep training. (Impossible - I would have been fired or incredibly resentful as I would have used up all of my vacation time.)

We have an only child, so our situation is a bit different. I continued to co-sleep and then I started sleeping in the same room but not in the same bed. I bought a camping mat (HEST) that is seriously more comfortable than our bed and slept on that. If we had a bigger room, we might have been able to fit another mattress. 

Around age 7/8, the child acted developmentally appropriate and wanted to try to sleep alone. By age 10/11, the child definitely did not want me in the room. A short and sweet "good night" and the child went into their room. Child is 12 years old now and in full puberty, and child craves alone time and kicks us out of their room. 

Sleep deprivation is real and depletes us to no end. Hang in there, mom. 

That sounds really hard, and you definitely deserve more sleep. For what it’s worth, I think it’s possible! Humans are adaptable, as are human kids who are adapting to their world and its rules everyday. Don’t let people tell you it’s all over bc you didn’t sleep train (by the way, I did sleep train, perfect independent sleep for 3 years, and at a certain point kids want to be in bed with parents anyway bc they have fears related to their new developmental stage). Im not an expert, but a few things to try: 

For the two older kids, try incentives, such as a daily reward or a weekly reward chart: stay in your bed, get a prize. Something really good for the weekly reward (ice cream at the end of the week). 
Make sure they have water, a night light,  a potty, and a a “time to wake” clock in their room(s). also, maybe they can share a room so they don’t feel alone? 

If you want to try harsher methods, I know parents who use those crib tents to keep kids inside. This worked with a 3.5-4 year old. but there will be crying. You can try going in a few times at first to reassure them, but stick to the plan: stay in bed until (time). Or simply lock the door from the outside, making sure their rooms are super safe.

For the baby, you can sleep train! The Ferber method worked well for us. One secret about sleep training is that it’s often not just one event. If you are really serious about it, you may need to sleep train and re-sleep train several times throughout the early years. 

If you want to co-sleep, you MAY be able to later on, once your baby knows how to fall asleep, stay asleep, and go back to sleep on their own. However, going back to co-sleeping at any point will reintroduce the dependency. From what I’ve observed of babies/toddlers who were never sleep trained (and fall asleep by getting nursed or held), is that they can’t get back to sleep by themselves if they wake up during the night. So in my opinion, it’s worth it to sleep train to teach that skill. Although I sleep trained my 2 yo as an infant, I now cosleep with him (I missed out on this with my older kid bc we were strict about independent sleep). co-sleeping with him is not perfect, but at least he doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night because he can just fall asleep on his own. 

Parents got to do what they got to do to function as a good parent. So lovingly and firmly do what you need to do, especially if you are at a breaking point. 

If you want some real professional advice (which will definitely lean more on harsher tactics), try sleep consultant/baby nurse Marsha Podd. 

Two words: sleep consultant! There is SO much you can do. I also coslept in the first 6 months and then at some point it turns from the solution to the problem. I highly, highly, recommend Nicole ( https://www.sleepy-mama.com) we worked with her in NJ and then here remotely with our (then co-sleeping) third and she’s a miracle worker.

Highly recommend working with Sleep Wise Consulting! We used them to help sleep train our kid when she was a baby, and then hired them again to help when she was ready to transition to a bed (4 y/o). They are fantastic -- excellent customer service, relatable, non-judgmental, and incredible commitment to getting everyone more and better sleep. Best investment we've made as parents :) Good luck! https://sleepwiseconsulting.com/

Hi,

I’m sorry to hear about your sleep troubles. I do not have direct experience with this (my son is only 6 months and we still sleep in the same room), but my sister in law had this issue. She could not get her four year old to sleep in his own room. She eventually started paying him money to sleep in his own bed in his own room. Worked right away. He was told he could save the money to buy a toy. She says most days he now forgets to ask for his money. She said it was a good way to teach him to save. My other sister in law had a similar issue trying to get her five year old and three year old to sleep in their own rooms. Instead of having them each in their own room she tried having them sleep together in a single room (not hers). It had some success. For my 6 month old son we recently did sleep training using the Ferber method because he was waking up very frequently at night and a lot of the time he was not actually hungry. I only did the method on his 2AM and 3AM wakings, but he took to it very well and he quickly stopped most of his night wakings. He only wakes up once during the night to eat instead of every hour like he was doing previously.

Good luck and hoping you get some rest soon.

For the 3 and 5 year olds, you could consider announcing that you have a new household rule that everyone falls asleep in their own beds. It's OK if they wake up in the night and come into your bed, but they have to start out the night in their own beds. This is not going to be a quick fix, they may spend a full year coming in to your bed at 2am, but eventually they will end up sleeping through in their own beds. And this way you hopefully get a decent stretch of sleep in the early part of the night before the first kid joins you, and you don't have to exhaust yourself walking them back to their own beds. I co-slept with my little until 3, and then moved him to his own bed with this rule. My sleep improved considerably immediately, and I didn't mind the minimal wake up when he came into my bed in the early hours.

I'm not sure how this plays with the 6 month old though, since you'll probably want to continue co-sleeping with them for a while, and that might result in some jealousy from the older kids.

I only had one child, but we co-slept with her until she was 2.5 years. What worked for us was a slower transition.

1. First, we got her her own bed, but, initially, we set it up in our bedroom. I stayed with her while she fell asleep. Now, this worked because she was asleep within about 15 minutes.
2. For the first few weeks, she would wake up at some point in the night and climb into bed with us. I just let her do it, I did not get up and put her back in her own bed. After a few weeks, she stopped waking up and just slept through the night in her own bed.

3. Once she’d been sleeping in her own bed in our room for a couple of months, we moved her to her own room. For a while, we had a repeat of the previous pattern: she’d wake up in the middle if the night and patter into our room and climb into our bed. I let her do it. Within two weeks, she was sleeping through the night in her own room.

   I realize that with three, it may not be this simple and straightforward, especially if you’re still nursing a now teething 6 month old, but perhaps you can adopt a similar transition process that doesn’t require you to keep getting up to guide the other two back to their beds throughout the night?