Sleep

Why is it that sleep comes so easily to some and not to others...

I have never really had any sleep issues. As a teen (and even sometimes now) I would sometimes need to get up before falling asleep and write down my thoughts (lists, things not to forget to take somewhere the next day, etc.) but that was the extent of it. And as a mother and foster mom I have turned into a very light sleeper listening for cries, etc. in the night but haven't had ANY trouble getting to sleep in the first place!

Brooke went through a phase when she moved from a baby bed to a toddler bed that she thought she needed daddy or I (mostly daddy, have I ever said that she has him wrapped around her little finger??) to sit next to her bed at night while she fell asleep but it was never that she couldn't fall asleep...just that she had young gullible first time parents :-)

While doing foster care we had all kinds of sleepers. Some that slept WAY too much and some that didn't seem to sleep at all!

Lexy has always had trouble sleeping starting as an infant waking to every sound so we began using a sound machine in her room. She then settled into her own sleep pattern of staying up late and waking up late (and stopped taking naps on her own when she turned two). That pattern worked until last year when she started morning preschool and had to get up early. We worked really hard at setting up a good bedtime routine at that time but she seemed to have a really hard time falling asleep at bedtime and this has gotten worse over this summer. It has been taking her between 1.5 and 2.5 hours to get herself to sleep. We have tried changing bedtime routines/time, sound machines, music, making her lay still, letting her play in her room, etc. and nothing has really worked.

It's not that she bothers us (although sometimes she will call out to us) when she can't fall asleep but now that she's starting kindergarten I am concerned that she won't be getting enough rest if she's not able to fall asleep quickly.

We are trying something new right now, a short term regimine of melatonin, in hopes of resetting her sleep clock but tonight was our first night of not using the melatonin (after three nights of using it and her falling asleep within 30 min.) and it took her about 1.5 hours to fall asleep again :( We plan on finishing out the regimine with hopes that it will work for her but tonight was disappointing.

I just hate to see her have trouble doing anything, it breaks the mama's heart! I'm open to suggestions, insight, etc. from anyone that has BTDT.