My failed attempt at trying to get DS (15 mos) to sleep outside of our home...Please help! (long)

DS is 15 mos and we never had him sleep anywhere but home. It took us 10 mos, Dr. Ferber and a consistent schedule to even sleep at home so we were always too chicken to mess with it or to ruin a vaca with trying to see if he would sleep out.

So Christmas Eve is at my parents and starts late and is the biggest holiday of the year for my family. We didn't want to miss it and didn't want DS too and decided it would be the perfect opportunity to try to sleep out. Given the nature of the event we put him down 2 hours later than his usual bedtime (even though the party was still going on) so he was VERY tired. We set up the pack n play and the plan was he would go down first and a few hours later we would sleep in the bed in the same room. I tried to do everything very similar to home and keep most of the routine in tact.

Well the second i put him in the pnp he started screaming bloody murder. i let him cry at first but after a little bit DH went in to try to comfort him. After an hour and rocking him he got him to sleep and put him in the pnp and we thought all was good. not even two hours later (we still hadn't gone in to go to sleep) he woke up screaming again and would not go back to sleep. NOTHING we did got him to sleep. He wouldn't sleep in the bed with us, wouldn't fall asleep with the tv downstairs and even rocking wasn't working. After 20 min of rocking he fell asleep only to wake up immed upon being placed in the pnp. Finally, another 20 min of rocking later we got him to sleep in the bed with us. It was SIX AM!

Needless to say i am afraid that we can never do this again If you've made it this long THANK YOU - and if anyone has had a difficult sleeper like we have and you have ANY advice at all it would be greatly appreciated

Re: My failed attempt at trying to get DS (15 mos) to sleep outside of our home...Please help! (long)

My DS has only had to sleep in his PNP on a few occassions. Overall he has done fairly well...But he goes down to sleep exceptionally well to begin with.

My advice is to just be consistant when these type of situations present themselves. Over time Im sure that he will adjust and learn to sleep in the PNP.

Just be consistant and he'll figure it all out...

Re: My failed attempt at trying to get DS (15 mos) to sleep outside of our home...Please help! (long)

We had the same problem last night!! We were at the inlaws-we tried 6 times to get ds to sleep in the pnp-NO luck at all!!
We went home-I put him in his crib-said goodnight-shut the door and he was asleep in 1 minute!! Next time I'll just keep him up until we leave(he usually goes to sleep at 7pm),but christmas eve is always late and very important to our family.
So I figure one day won't hurt him!

Re: My failed attempt at trying to get DS (15 mos) to sleep outside of our home...Please help! (long)

I had a night like that with DD#1 when she was that age. I ended up watching movies with her on my lap all night long. UGH. The next night was better, I never had a night quite so bad again. It stinks and definitely kept me from traveling except when really motivated. I'd say don't think too hard about it. Try again if there is somewhere special you want to be, and stay home if you aren't that excited about going somewhere. It will improve when she is older. We started making very long daytrips for family events -- loading her in the car in her pajamas at bedtime and then driving home for two hours.

Re: My failed attempt at trying to get DS (15 mos) to sleep outside of our home...Please help! (long)

Thanks ladies. Hgbula-when u say be consistent do you mean try doing it more often? I'm not sure if we try to do this more often if it will help or is this just how he is?