Sleep.....or lack there of

I was beginning to accept the fact that we just would never get a full night sleep ever ever again. Occasionally we would get one here or there but never multiple nights in a row. Why you ask? This is due to many years of having babies and our beautiful 5th child that just doesn't sleep, at least not through the night, as well as our aging dog.

This adorable child of ours has not slept well since she was 4 months old. She is now 5! We have tried everything. All of our other kids have always slept very well. They hit the age where you have to let them cry it out and which is horrendous for a week but then they sleep all night long, seemingly forever. Not this child! We used to have to make her cry it out as a baby monthly, no lie. I never understood it and 4 years later I still do not understand. We tried a higher quality mattress, more clothes, less clothes, more blankets, less blankets, a weighted blanket, night lights, fans, music, a sleep mask. We even bought the Alexa night light that has certain colored lights to let said child know when it is okay to get out of bed......nothing and I mean nothing works!

sleep mask for the win:

We have tried a sticker chart, a reward after sleeping 5 nights straight which she literally has still not reached! We have tried yelling at her, we tried being super sweet and nice. For a while we would robotically just get up and 'fix her blanket's or just tuck her back in and sleepily crawl back into bed. Some nights she wakes up multiple times and we literally want to scream! We always take turns. Occasionally the other person doesn't even hear her or wake up due to severe sleep deprivation but usually we are both woken up disturbing our sleep cycle. Sometimes she cries from her bed or just loudly huffs and puffs, other times I feel like I am in a horror movie as I suddenly wake up to a child tapping my face or whispering 'moooooom'. I feel like I am sleeping on edge lately and hear her footsteps creeping into our room even when there are no footsteps in order to avoid waking up to a person staring at my face! We can't even grasp this concept that our child doesn't sleep through the night. She is our 5th child. We know what we are doing. The other children are amazing sleepers. Yes they have all scared us half to death walking us up due to a nightmare or a headache or not feeling well but not every single night! We are 40 years old. We are getting tired. Very tired.

She is lucky she is cute

We realized she sleeps great with a sibling in her room and desperate times call for desperate measures so every weekend her brother would join her for a sleepover. They both love it and we were so excited to get some much needed sleep.....so we think but then we remember our aging dog that decides to bark until we let him outside somewhere between the hours of 12 AM and 2 AM. Seriously, what did we do to deserve this?! We need solid sleep to even have the energy for 5 kids, take care of our house and run a business.

Recently we hit our breaking point. We decided her brother can not sleep in her room until she sleeps all night, every night. We have no other choice. She has been doing really well because she loves when he sleeps in her room. They are the cutest siblings. The kids bounce around bedrooms on the weekends and all really enjoy their little slumber parties. This is working and she is doing much better, thank goodness!

Now for the aging dog. He sleeps in the basement which is two floors down from our bedroom. Two children have bedrooms down there and I believe he tries to avoid the cats. He is old and goes to bed around 8 pm. We try and wake him up around 11 pm to go out one last time but even that doesn't work. His bark jolts us awake yet no one else in the house wakes up so it is always on us. He won't even come back in the same door you let him out so you have to walk to the other side of the house which happens to be the coldest room in the house to let him back in and this occurs anytime of the night between 12 am and 4 am. We recently tried waking him up at 11 pm and letting him out and then taking him into our room and wishfully hope he sleeps the rest of the night. This worked for a whole 2 nights! This week we did the whole routine and got him settled upstairs and the cats scared him so downstairs he went to awaken us hours later.

So our sleeping dilemma may never end. Lily has been doing well this week and has been sick so I am very proud of her. The dog has not. We did get a whole 2 nights so I guess we will take that! One day we won't have a dog and the kids will be all grown so I guess we will just have to wait for that time in our lives!