Sleep Dilemma: Part 712,789,3475

You would think that by now, at over 2 years old, I could stop writing about sleep issues with my child.  I have never, in my life, seen a kid who has given their parents more anxiety over sleep than Miss Charlotte.  I do not understand it.  I am losing my mind.  Last night I sat on my bed and cried as she screamed and screamed and screamed in her room.  You see, the problem now isn’t sleeping through the night.  Oh no, once she goes to sleep she is staying asleep.  In fact, I haven’t even seen her in the morning before I leave for work.  The problem now is going to bed.  We’ve had the same effing bedtime routine for over a year.  We take a bath (sometimes), we put on our pajamas and then we read stories before bed.  Charlotte usually protested bedtime but would conk out in 5-10 minutes.  Last night she screamed her head off for 45 minutes.  The night before was a half hour.  The night before that was 20 minutes.  So you’ll see the pattern of it GETTING WORSE.  She stands up and yells “out mama!” “open the door mama!” “mama! mama! mama!” and cries so hard it sounds like she’s on fire.  I cannot take it anymore.  She starts crying before I even stop reading her books for the 500th time.  I googled it and apparently it’s normal for a toddler to start to protest bedtime but nobody has a great solution and I’m completely out of ideas.  We’ve never been able to go into her room when she cries because that always made things worse, but do I do that now?  Should I go in and say it’s okay and that it’s time to sleep and walk out again?  Or will that just make her scream harder and louder?  Do I lay on the floor next to her crib until she falls asleep?  Do I just continue to let the screaming go on and pray she isn’t traumatized for life and hope it’s just a phase?  Do I return her for a new model?

I’m sure you’re sick of me writing about this problem by now.  I can assure you I am sick of living it.