I Just Want A Good Night's Sleep!

Although Kyla started sleeping through the night when she was around 3 months old, she was never what you would consider the easiest kid to put to bed. She would not go to sleep until she was good and ready, no matter how hard we tried. When she was young, we would let her play on the floor until she crawled under one of the couch end tables, held onto the leg for security, and fell asleep. After she was in a deep sleep, we could pick her up and put her in her crib...and she would stay soundly asleep until the next morning.

As she grew older, it became harder and harder to get her to sleep and many nights, she would still be going strong at 10:30 or later at night. Putting her in her bed didn't help. She would just get up or scream at her closed bedroom door until you were seeing cross-eyed! Watching a movie or listening to bedtime music didn't work either. She forced herself to stay away until it ended and then ask for it to start over.

The one thing that really seemed to work was someone crawling into bed with her until she fell asleep, which meant that you usually fell asleep too. If we were lucky enough to wake up during the middle of the night and stagger into our bed...Kyla usually followed shortly behind. After growing tired of her sleeping in bed between us, we finally broke down and purchased one of those little unfolding sofas that are in the toy department...and that is where she slept until a week ago.

When the February 2008 issue of Parenting magazine arrived in our mail box, I immediately noticed the following words in the upper left hand corner of the front cover..."Turn Any Kid Into A Good Sleeper"...a reference to an article titled "How To Get Your Child TO Sleep (Really)" by Holly Robinson.




How to Get Your Child to Sleep Really! - Parenting.com
http://www.parenting.com/parenting/healthypregnancy/article/0,19840,mGpqoadmrQ==,00.html

So at my first opportunity, I turned to page 106 and read the article to see if it was anything that might work with Kyla. After using the techniques listed, she was sleeping through the night in bed by herself in only a couple of days!



I just wish the the process also worked on Bryleigh. She is still insistent on sleeping on Mommy's chest, between Mom & Dad, or on rare occasions...the sofa in the family room!



Some times, I finally decide that enough is enough. I rock her to sleep, waiting until she is in a really deep sleep. Then as I slowly and quietly go to lay her down by herself...those big blue eyes pop over and she is wide awake again! She must thing that it is hysterical to see Mom & Dad looking like characters from "Night Of The Living Dead!"