Jonah stopped sleeping through the night right around Caleb's baptism, the beginning of November. It was painful because he'd only just started sleeping all night around the beginning of July, after our big family trip. Because we had house guests, we didn't want to let him cry, which I think was our big mistake. He started crying every night after that, expecting us to come in and cuddle and eventually take him back to our bed because we were so tired. So, after a visit to the doctor for his 18-month checkup (a couple months late), we decided to really start sticking to our guns and only go in once to comfort him without taking him out of the crib and then letting him cry. The only problem was that the week of Thanksgiving (a couple of weeks into this), he started climbing out of his crib. So when he'd wake up, he would cry, then climb (fall) out of the crib and then cry some more. It didn't help him learn to fall back to sleep and I was constantly worried he'd break a limb or his neck falling out of the crib.
So...just after Thanksgiving and our guests left, I took the side off the crib and made it a toddler bed. The problem was that we had gotten rid of the low side that made it a toddler bed--the rail. We hadn't ever used this crib as a toddler bed because we had a baby who needed the crib and an actual toddler bed. We got rid of the toddler bed a couple of years ago because Eliza transitioned straight from her crib to the bottom bunk (she was almost three) and we didn't have room for the toddler bed for storing it. The first couple of nights Jonah was in this "bed", he would roll off the side and wake up and cry. I started looking at toddler bed railings online, trying to find the best one for the best price. Then Corey came up with an idea.
He got a big piece of PVC pipe, about two inches in diameter, and glued the pieces together so they would be the length of the bed. Then he tied a rope through the pipe and sealed the ends with holes for the rope. Then I covered the pipe with batting and fabric. He tied in on the slats at the ends of the bed and we created a bumper to keep Jonah from falling out. It's low enough that Jonah can climb in and out of the bed on his own but high enough that it keeps him from rolling off while he sleeps. And Jonah LOVES the ball theme of the fabric I happened to have!
And it was much cheaper than any of the toddler railings I was looking at! Since I already had the batting and fabric and we already had the rope, it was the cost of the PVC pipe, which was about $6. Better than the $29 I was looking at!
Since then, Jonah has actually done quite well at night. He goes to bed without a fuss and sleeps all night. The first few nights were rough because he would get out and cry and one night he fell asleep on the floor, but for the last week, he's done well. Now it's naptime battles that we're dealing with. He eventually falls asleep after crying at naptime, but then he rarely sleeps longer than an hour and previous to this sleep refusal stage, he was sleeping 2-3 hours at naptime. I am trying to get his naps back because at 20 months, he is not ready to stop napping and I'm not ready for him to stop napping. We're working on it. One hour is better than nothing!
