As many of my regular readers, friends and family may know,  Novella has never been a great sleeper from day one. I think I could probably count on my two hands the number of nights she has slept through the night in the past 2 years and 5 months. When she was breast feeding she wanted to be latched on all the time, at nighttime she would wake every hour or less to nurse. You can imagine just how exhausting that was, I was in a sense a walking and mostly functioning zombie (or as some friends might say,  a mombie). The only way I was able to function was to have her in our bed, so I could roll over, and nurse her as I slept.

When we found out we were expecting Aveline,  I decided it was time to start making our way to transitioning her to her own big girl bed. This may have been the biggest struggle we have had so far in parenting. After months of trial and error, we finally got her to start sleeping in her own bed. Then her sister arrived and then we had a whole new struggle.

Nighttime has improved significantly, she still ends up in our bed most nights at one point or another, but this is huge for her. The hardest part for us right now is getting her to go to sleep, she fights it almost every night. But in the end she always finds rest.

Her new thing that she likes to try is telling us that she needs to go potty, or that she is cold to try to get out of bed. Although in the end, she often admits that she is just trying to get out of bed. The hardest part about our night time struggles is that she had night terrors when she was little, so it made me grateful she was in our bed to try and comfort and soothe her until it was over and she was resting soundly again. She still has nightmares occasionally now too, but can never recall them to tell you what scared her. My favorite part at night is we usually have the same conversation each night…

We begin by saying our bedtime prayer, then we talk quietly about our day and our favorite things we did, then what we have to look forward to the next day. Next, we remind her,

Me- “you have nothing to be scared or afraid of, do you remember why?”

Novella – “God will keep me safe”

Me – “and if you feel scared or afraid, what do you do?”

Novella – “pray to God, let’s pray now momma.”

So then we proceed to say our second nighttime prayer, a specific prayer for God’s  safety and his help so that she doesn’t feel scared or afraid of things, we ask God to protect her dreams, and protect her from harms way, both physically and spiritually. There are times I have cried as I rock her to sleep and pray these prayers over her again because she has woken up screaming from a nightmare. When there is nothing else you can do, you hold them tight and you pray… I have a feeling that will be true about other aspects of our lives as our children grow, sometimes that is the best and only thing you can do. Pray.