All I want for Christmas is a king size bed

I found this article a few weeks ago. It turned up when I did yet another Google search for "toddler won't sleep." I shared it with Tom last night around 11 p.m., when Henry was entering Hour 3 of his prolonged protest about being put to bed. Yes--3 hours standing up in his crib, alternately crying, shrieking, or just babbling away to himself and his stuffed animals (that part is kind of cute). Just a typical night around here. As most of you are probably aware, Henry's poor sleep habits have been the dominating issue of our household since literally the day we brought him home from the hospital. For the longest time we've been searching for a way to get him to that by-the-book ideal of 10-12 hours of sleep at night, coupled with a 2-3 hour afternoon nap. Honestly, I might as well set my sights on winning the Nobel Prize for physics. We've searched long and hard for a solution to the sleep issue, but everything we try fails eventually.

Our experience has been very similar to that described in the article. It's funny that I found it when I did, because I've also given up. It's time. Tom and I long ago started suspecting that Henry just doesn't have the strong biological need for extended sleep that most kids his age do. (Many other times we've suspected that we're simply incompetent parents when it comes to this particular aspect of child rearing, but I'm over that.) In trying to swim against this current, we've been through it all. The countless sleep books read and techniques attempted in the hope that Henry would develop normal sleep habits. Positive sleep associations. The regular bedtime routine. The white noise CD. Etc., etc. We've Ferberized him so many times I think we should tattoo a trademark on his forehead. Sometimes we'll see a bit of improvement for a few months, but soon enough, Henry will go back to his usual routine of not wanting to go to bed, and/or not staying asleep for more than a few hours at a time. It's frustrating and exhausting. Last winter I was almost driven insane by Henry's persistent, repeated night waking, which I tried to deal with in the prescribed way by ignoring his cries in the middle of the night, hoping in vain that he'd learn to go back to sleep on his own. Maybe if we lived in a bigger house it would work. But there's nothing more miserable than lying awake at 3 in the morning, listening to the child in the next room shriek his head off. And doing that night after night. It is torture. And as Henry closes in on his 3rd birthday, I just don't think it's going to change in any profound way.

So, no more. I quit! Henry wins this round. We don't try to put him down for afternoon naps anymore. It's pointless. If he wakes up in the middle of the night, I don't go into his room for a quick soothing, then head back to my own bed, because he rarely goes back to sleep. No, I just go get him and put him into our bed. Yes, it's crowded. Yes, some nights he kicks and squirms like a rodeo heifer. But it beats the alternative (I lie awake while Henry screams his head off), and when he's close I can deal with subsequent wakings with a quick cuddle. We'll stick with our established nightly bedtime routine, and enjoy those evenings when he goes down without a fuss. But I just won't count on it happening every night, and I'll try not to get frustrated when it takes him hours to fall asleep.

On the bright side, one common denominator I've noticed with super-successful people is that they can get by on very little sleep. So maybe Henry's just priming himself for a climb up the golden ladder. In the meantime, the only practical solution I see to our little problem is a king size bed. What do you say, Santa?