18 month sleep regression. YAY!!!

God knows I love my child. She is so pretty, so smart, and such a joy in our lives. But our poor girl just has bad sleep problems and always has. Before a child makes a developmental leap, they can go through something called sleep regression - something I have talked about before. 18 months is no exception. She is making huge developmental leaps now. She is learning so quickly, interacting better with children her age, figuring out puzzles, etc. Because she has so much going on in her brain, she just doesn't want to sleep. She wants to stay up and play! Of course, who wouldn't?

Two nights ago she didn't go to sleep until about 8:30. Her bedtime is about 7:30. This means it took us an hour to get her to go to sleep. Not just leaving her in her bed and letting her cry, I mean actively dealing with her trying to get her to sleep. This is exhausting. Then, at about 1am she woke up again WIDE AWAKE, ready to play! It took Brodie and me 2 hours to get her to go back to sleep. We were exhausted. She was up, ready to start her day at 7am. We were dead!!! She didn't go down for her 12pm nap until almost 3pm.

For those of you who never had any kind of sleep issues with their kids...THANK GOD!!! The good thing is that I know this is a phase and it will pass, eventually. Although I still don't have the patience that I need, I have much more compassion than ever before. That alone helps me stay calm and better in control of the situation. I KNOW that this will pass and that too helps sustain me.

I pray that this won't last long. I pray that God will give me the energy that I need when I need it. I hope that this is harder on me than it is Taylor. And I love my husband for doing the best that he can with both of us when we are going through these trying times.

I hope that Ashlyn is a better sleeper than Taylor!