Sleep

Sleeping in our house has been quite interesting for the last few months. We noticed over the summer while we had family spending the weekend at our house we had Henslee sleeping in our room. We woke up to her at 1:30 am hysterically laughing.  Then a few months later while camping we noticed she was not sleeping at all but bouncing in her pack n play. Both have gotten extremely worse in the last few months. On average Henslee sleeps from 7-11 pm and then is up bouncy and laughing until the next morning. She is losing at least 4-5 hrs a sleep per night due to bouncing.

 

 We have talked to all of her therapist about this and no one can seem to come up with anything to help. We tried Melatonin which is supposed to help with sleep. It will help Henslee go to sleep but will not keep her asleep. We all need our sleep. She is becoming very agitated/angry during the day and I can only imagine it is due to no sleep. We ended up taking the springs and base out of the bottom of her crib so she was unable to get the extra bounce from that. We also saw her pediatrician who prescribed her Trazadone, a medication to help with sleep. We gave it to her for the first time last night so hopefully we see a difference. She did wake up today pretty angry so I will keep my fingers crossed that it will eventually work.

Another thing we decided to do was put a gate in Henslee's crib. My hubby is a genius. It has been getting quite hard to get Henslee in and out of her crib. Our little Miss is at 41 lbs and while she is throwing her tantrums she might as well be 100 lbs. So Jesse installed a gate so she is able to get in and out of her bed on her own!! Yipee! My back is shouting HOORAY!!! We tried it with just an opening for 1 night but after we put her down we could hear her in her room destroying everything. So for her own safety we installed the gate. Which keeps her safe and sound in her bed!! She even knows how to get in and out. This little Miss is so smart!

After putting her in their for the first night and locking the gate it made me really sad. A gate with a lock on my daughters crib??? What the heck!!  But I have to realize we do things a bit different around our house. We do what we need to. We do what is best for Henslee. We do what is best for our family. So what if it's different? So what if it's not the norm. WE are definitely not the norm and to be honest I am glad we are not the norm.