Baby & Toddler

Power goes off at night twice a week now, and our toddler wakes the moment the fan stops

mellow_kite_823

Our area has had night cuts this week, usually half an hour, sometimes longer. Every time the fan stops she is awake and screaming within a minute, and then it's an hour to get her back down. We have an inverter, but it only runs the lights and the hall fan, not the bedroom. I've been told 'just move her to the hall' and 'she'll get used to it'. Neither of those is a plan. What are people with small children doing about this?

6 comments

  • silver_camera_8565

    We had the electrician rewire so the inverter covers the bedroom fan instead of the hall one. Took him about an hour. Cuts here are shorter but the waking-when-the-fan-stops thing seems to be universal 🤷

    • mellow_kite_823

      How much did the rewiring cost, roughly, and did the inverter cope with the extra load?

  • apricot_pebble_842

    When mine were small we found it was the sudden silence as much as the heat that woke them. A white noise app on a phone, running all night at low volume, meant the fan stopping was less of a change. I can't say how much was the noise and how much was them simply growing out of it.

    • indigo_trail_4041

      White noise worked for us too when our daughter was small. We used the old radio tuned between stations 🙂 The cuts in those years were far worse than this.

    • sunny_pool_5336

      Did the white noise turn into something she couldn't sleep without later? That's what stops me trying it with ours.

  • ochre_diary_6404

    Rechargeable table fan. Charge it in the day, keep it by the cot. Weaker than the ceiling fan, but half asleep she won't know the difference.

  • sage_balcony_865

    Moving her to the hall is what we did with our son years ago, and it did become a plan in the end, just not a nice one. All of us slept on the hall floor for most of one May 🙂

    • mellow_kite_823

      One May on the floor I can probably survive. Did your son go back to his own bed easily afterwards?

  • mango_marigold_3239

    Same problem here, longer cuts. Battery fan plus white noise. She still wakes some nights. Anyone promising you a full fix is wrong.

  • silver_gecko_935

    Ours is 21 now, and the summer cuts in her toddler years are one of the few things from that time I remember clearly. We kept a hand fan by the bed and took turns. Not a solution. Just company.

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