Sleep - what's that?

And now for my weekly whinge.

Last night was a shocker. And when I say shocker,  I mean a three hour battle to get the girls to sleep.
If you have read early posts from when Tara was a baby, you'd see this pattern of bad-sleeping behaviour started from infancy. Hope is even worse. Every night, she crawls into my bed after disrupting Eden for hours.

I can't remember a night since the kids were born when it was an easy transition to bed.
In an effort to try a different tack, last night I used reverse psychology instead of the usual broken-down record, "go to bed, you've had a drink, you don't need to go to the toilet again. GET to BED. Stop swapping beds, stop talking, STOP fighting. GET  TO F*&%ING BED."

And so, I told my eldest and youngest after an hour of bickering with my poor middle child, who just wanted to sleep, that they weren't allowed to go to bed.
I proceeded to plonk them both in the loungeroom and told them they were not allowed to sleep. I really thought this might work.

How wrong could I be.

What eventuated was a further two hour screaming match, crying, bellowing (my poor neighbours) and a draining, exhausting, emotionally painful battle.

At around 11pm, they both fell asleep on the floor of the hallway. Daddy transferred them both to their beds soon after. By this stage, I'd retreated to my bed, closed my door and cried myself to sleep.

I honestly thought I would have some small victory. The reality was that even though I had stuck to my guns and refused them to go back to their beds, it was one of the worst nights I'd had in a long time.
There is no solution. I've resigned myself to this fact. I've tried everything. Yelling doesn't work, compromise doesn't work, reverse psychology also was a flop, reward charts, blackmail, begging, NOTHING HAS WORKED. I've tried it all and I feel like a failure.

And, the biggest loser in this situation is me. They woke up this morning with no recollection of the torment they put me through last night. The guilt I feel for being angry at them, the feelings of incompetence - these feelings will haunt me all day.


The only hope I'm clinging to is that when we move to a bigger place, (hopefully soon) the kids will be more settled. I have nothing to base this one, but I'm totally spent.

The "un-joys' of motherhood!

Yawn.......