The light at the end of the 'no sleep' tunnel

Parenting is just a series of stages; some are more pleasant than others.

We are now at the end (hopefully!) of surviving what was one of the worst stages ever....Sam not going to bed easily, waking up periodically throughout the entire night, and waking up at G-d awful early hours ready for the day. Yes, we got hit at every end you can imagine. It wasn't pretty, nor a whole lot of fun. If Sam could've been traded in for a new model, you would've found us in line patiently waiting for a little girl who knew how to sleep and for how long.

Unfortunately this wasn't just a week out of our lives, but more like 4 or 5. Her sleep habits had been getting worse and it was turning into an experiment of just how little sleep Sam could manage to live on. Unfortunately this meant that Jeff & I were along for the ride and surviving on the same amount of sleep. Normally a 12 hour a night girl, Sam was fighting us on going to bed (something she had NEVER done before) and would scream for an hour or two before finally going down. Then around 12:00am, she would start to wake-up every 20 minutes or so and scream until we came in her room and told her to lie down again. 20 minutes later, the same exact thing...all night long. If we got really lucky, Sam would then wake-up in the 5:00am hour and be ready to start her day.

Jeff and I would employ different tactics each night to see if anything would result in her (and us) getting some sleep. One night we just let her cry/scream it out (starting at 12:20am). We refused to go in there and waited until she exhausted herself and collapsed in a heap finally sleeping. She got the better of us and never did. She NEVER went back to sleep. She stood in her crib from 12:20am until 5:30am when we finally went in and rescued her.

Then the next night, we decided the minute she woke-up, we would get her out of the crib and bring her in bed with us. That resulted in her kicking me in the back from 3:40am until 5:30am. At 5:30am, she finally did go to sleep and slept in our bed until 8:00am.

For about 5 nights in a row, she decided she just needed to be re-covered and would stand and scream "mommy, cover me". I go in her room, cover her and then about 1.5 hours later, we repeat the process. Not bad, we were slowly making progress.

Somehow, Sam learned how to go sleep again. She no longer has a tough time falling asleep. She no longer wakes-up throughout the night. Our only issue left to resolve is the waking up at a ridiculously early hour. I thought I was an early riser, but she is putting me to shame! For the past week, Sam has been waking-up at 5:30am. Our pattern has been to go get her and bring her in bed with us. We all lie very still in the hopes that she will fall asleep again. Ha! I know this is wishful thinking. The other morning, Sam started rubbing my back. Who is trying to get who to go back to sleep!?!?!?!