Toddler Tales: Not Sleeping Through The Nights

A few weeks ago I posted our daily schedule. I mentioned then that nights aren't easy to predict. Some nights, my toddler sleeps straight through with no issues (YES). Other nights, she wakes and won't go back to sleep for hours. Like 2+ hours. The struggle is real.

Sleep has almost always been a challenge for our toddler. At birth, she had her days and nights backwards and it took months for us to get that switched. It wasn't until just before her 2nd birthday that she finally had periods of time where she slept straight through the night. Prior to that, the 1-2 nightly wakings would only last about 20 minutes. I would have her use the potty and rock her back to sleep. It was fairly routine and predictable. Just how I like it!

In the last couple of months, there is little to no predictability and I'm not entirely sure why. It may partially be due to not really having a routine when she wakes in the middle of the night now. When I got to the point where Payton wasn't falling asleep when I rocked her, I had no idea what to do next. I tried to lay with her in the toddler bed, where she would fall asleep but would wake as soon as I left. Being 7+ months pregnant now, it's not realistic for me to plan to sleep in a toddler bed all night (talk about leg cramps and hip/back pain). Now I feel like I've tried it all, sometimes within the same night. Rocking, bedtime story, sending in daddy, crying it out, laying in toddler bed, parent laying on floor next to crib all do not seem to be working. In the end, our child has ended up in our bed. This seems to be the ony way we all get any sleep. 

When we became parents we really didn't want to allow children to sleep in our bed. This was a personal decision based on the idea that we stood the possibility of never getting them back to their own bed (we still struggle with the idea of having our 2 dogs sleep on the floor). As long as it doesn't appear that our daughter is waking just to come to our bed, I will probably continue on this path. 

It's just amazing to me how one rough night each week can really throw both my daughter and me off these days. A night of little sleep worries me for her as she struggled horribly the next day. She is frustrated easily, has trouble concentrating, and is typically more aggressive. I hope we get this sleep stuff worked out soon!

But... Who can resist such a cute face?

I would welcome any tips/advice you would have for me!

Tell me, have you been sleeping lately?