A Protest Towards Sleep

Keilana has given me a fit almost her whole life about sleeping. And those who have kept up with our family, even on the blog prior to this one (MSN), know that I have battled this for years. The last two weeks have been completely unbearable for me as far as Keilana's sleeping habits, so I decided to pull the plug on her. After doing some research online, I concluded that the best possible explanation would be insomnia, defined as "prolonged and usually abnormal inability to obtain adequate sleep" by Merriam-Webster, and "Sleep problems characterized by difficulty falling asleep, frequent wakings during the night, or waking up earlier than desired" by shuteye.com. A few causes that are to blame include but not limited to: stress, anxiety & change. I also learned that children, ages 1-3 should be getting between 11-13 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. I suspect that Lana was getting about 8 hours of inconsistent sleep, as she would wake in the middle of the night and take about 1-2 hours to fall asleep. So of course, she has been more "sassy" and irritable than I know she should be. She's very sweet, considerate, understanding, etc, but we ALL are cranky when we don't sleep well and I know this is what's been going on with her. Not to mention that the lack of sleep will compromise her immune system and the growth hormone is released during the NREM phase, the deepest sleep cycle.

I also understand from much research and experience that children need routine, consistency and I don't think that I have been all that conistent with her. We do have a bed time routine but sometimes we are rushed and reading time is cut short or left out and sometimes we don't pray, although this is highly rare. When Jon goes out of town, the kids sleep with me and she also had her tent in her room that she was changing back and forth to from her princess bed. So, I cleaned up EVERYthing in her room, her tent, any visible toys, and all clothes and clutter were put away. I gave her ONE cuddles and ONE baby, a flashlight and of course her nightlight that I explained would help her feel better if she got scared. I also put up a dream-catcher on her wall that I bought years ago on an Indian Reservation at 4 corners out west, and explained that this would catch any bad dreams she had. For now, she isn't allowed to do anything in her room EXCEPT sleep. If she wants any of her toys, she can get them but must bring them out of her room to play with them. For now, while I am trying to adjust her sleeping habits, I want her to associate her room with sleep, and sleep only. Not reading books, playing in her tent, playing with babies or any toys for that matter. Once I see we have gained a bit of leadway then I'll slowly allow her to do more things in her room.

Lastly, I had to take care of the issue of getting out of bed and coming out of her room when she wasn't suppose to, in hopes of keeping herself awake. This is what I came up with and I realize it looks ghetto scanned but it's super cute. Something that I whipped up on a whim in deseperation to get her to sleep better at night!

"Night Time"
This is the way I explained it to her. If the moon is up, she has to stay in bed unless she is sick or needs to go potty. Otherwise, the moon says "goodnight Lana" and she must fall asleep and stay in bed. Her consequence for getting out of bed is that I take away TV time.

"Day Time"
When the sun is up then it is time for Lana to get out of bed and play. And of course, the reward is she is allowed 30 minutes of TV time. Jon agreed to help me out with this by putting the sun up when he leaves for work.

Speaking of tv time, that was another struggle that we are overcoming. She was to the point of ALWAYS wanting to watch a tv show or movie and then would throw a fit if I didn't allow her to. I think that I got a little slack in allowing her to watch a little too much tv and so we are backing off of it in order to, perhaps, help her sleep better at night and not take tv for granted. We also get outside at LEAST 30 minutes a day but we always try to stay out an hour or more. And even though it seems like I am on top of things at this point, you have to consider HOW we got to this point to begin with. Jon and I blame ourselves as we would rock her to sleep from a baby and she never really learned how to soothe herself to sleep. There have been very few periods in her life that she would sleep really well at night. So, I'm buckling down and getting a grip on something that could turn out to be a bigger disaster in the making.