More Sleep Issues

January 2012 is about to come to a close and I am reminded that it was January 2011, one year ago, that Kimmie began again to be up nearly every night. She continues to have great difficulty sleeping through, and we may have compounded the problem.

Kimmie usually wakes up when her blankets become tangled around her. She is a blanket collector and has more than one that she insists on sleeping with. Certain ones she has to be covered up with and others she wads up into a ball and hugs. Sometimes in the night she changes her mind about which one she wants to be covered up with.

She would wake up in the night tangled up with her covers and start fussing. One of us would go in her room, straighten out her covers, tuck her in the way she likes and head back to bed. About the time we would get settled back in bed, she would be screaming again and throwing all her covers and animal friends on the floor. We would go back in her room, pick everything up and try again to get her blankets arranged just the way she likes.

This quickly turned into a yo-yo routine, where everytime we left her she would scream until we came back. To appease her, we (actually Dad) started laying down with her until she went back to sleep, then we would go back to bed. But, sometimes, we would fall asleep and end up in there all night.

When Kimmie is awake she does not like to be alone. She always wants someone nearby. She wants to be able to see us or hear us. But she had always slept ok by herself. Now, however, she has decided she likes having someone with her all night long.

Sleeping with Kimmie does not result in a full night's sleep. Even when I sleep with her she is usually up at least twice during the night wanting her covers rearranged. Sometimes I wake up to a little hand patting on me to make sure I'm still there. Sometimes, if she wakes up facing away from me, she fusses because she thinks she is alone.

On Saturdays, when she doesn't have to get up to go someplace, she will settle in about the time it starts to get light and sleep and sleep and sleep, all by herself, sometimes until 3:00 in the afternoon. Has she become afraid of the dark? Does she sleep better when she thinks it is morning?

At some point we are going to need to stop laying down with her to break this habit, but at the moment we are both so tired from a year of not sleeping well, that the thought of very little sleep for several nights in a row does not sound tolerable.

Maybe a fairly bright nightlight will help her think it is morning and that she needs to sleep before we come to get her up. . .

--Mom