I've a few questions for you..and please give me your thoughts if you will...
We're not quite sure what to do about a child not wanting to sleep in their bed. Isabella is 5, still semi young I know, but there hasn't been but maybe 2 nights in the last few months that she's slept in her bed all night. I'll give you a little bit of a background to see if that helps. Early on she slept with us and this lasted atleast 6 months...completely the wrong decision..it took forever to get her back into her bed...lots of long nights of crying from both of us! But at the time I was working early early mornings and she was still waking at night several times and it was the best way to nurse her and get her to sleep long stretches. I got better sleep as well. :D We learned from this mistake, it didn't happen with Elanoir. Eventually Isabella learned to sleep all night and that being in her bed wasn't such a bad thing. At age 3 we moved from our house and in with my in-laws. She had a new bedroom and we were right next to her in our room. She slept great and all night still...
When Ellie was born she slept in our room until she was too big for the cradle and then we gave her our room (it was too small for us..) and we got a new room. This left Isabella and Ellie on one side of the house and us on the other. She slept fine for a while. Then it changed. Now for the past 3 months or so she has been getting up between 2-6am to sleep on the couch. Which is closer to us..sometimes if we fight it in the middle of the night it's not worth it..risking waking Ellie..so we just give in and let her have the couch. Although I'd really like her in her bed so she can get some decent sleep. Threatening taking away toys doesn't seem to help..Last night Chris told her he was going to take her favorite toy, Tonya the lion, away if she got out of bed..so instead of getting out of bed she yelled for me. I'm glad she didn't wake Ellie but she could have. But, this was at 2am and instead of fighting again I let her have the couch so we could all go back to sleep easier.
I rise at 515 for work..so getting up a couple times a night doesn't sit well with me..I need my sleep. And so does she. She's exhausted by the end of the day..So what do you do?
Is it really that big of a deal? She sleeps fine there..so should we leave her? Assuming she will grow out of it eventually? I tell myself and Chris, that some day when I'm not working..we can fight it a bit more because I won't have to get up for work and if we're tired the next afternoon we can nap. Only under these circumstances, would I not mind getting up a couple times a night with her. Even still though, we're going to be tired.
Sleep deprivation always seems to be an issue at our house. Not sure if it's some for of warfare or if we're just not meant to sleep!? Ellie sleeps great at night but, isn't a good napper on average. Isabella is up atleast once if not twice a night. And is super cranky the next day after school, if she doesn't get a nap. I wake at every little sound. I wake each time Isabella is up. Every time I hear a cough out of anyone, everytime Chris snores, everytime I have an odd dream-which is fairly often, I'm just such a light sleeper. Chris is the opposite, he sleeps thru just about everything. I may not ever sleep well again now that we have kids! Which is fine..
It just seems to be a constant thing in our home. Not really a huge problem or issue, but it always exists.
So I am open to suggestions and advise..feel free to leave me a comment :)