'Soul destroying': Davina Smith's nightly battle to get her daughter to sleep

Don't underestimate the physical strength of my thirteen kilogram, two-year-old daughter.

Her name is Rose - but there's nothing delicate about my little petal.

I was holding her down on a hospital bed - my elbows locked, arms rod straight. Each palm pinned to her tiny round shoulders.

Her wrists and fists flapped wildly - trying to reach or wrap or wack anything she could touch just to make her point and get up.

She wanted to go home.

So did I baby girl! Oh gosh, so did I!!!

But I couldn't let her.

So she screamed and fought me. For a whole hour.

It was the worst hour of my life.

We had been admitted to a Sydney hospital for a sleep study - something I'd been putting off for two years.

I knew it was never going to be easy - trying to get a toddler to happily lay in bed while strangers hooked her up to forty odd wires, monitors, catheters and sensors. And then? We had to keep all those attachments on all night. 

So every chance I had an excuse to delay the test, I took it.

But after two and a half years of dealing with a baby, turned toddler, who didn't sleep we got to a point where a sleep study had to happen.

Our consult with the specialist a few weeks earlier was soul destroying - reliving every WAKING moment of Rose's life.

We'd tried everything - control crying, patting and shh'ing, dietary changes, co-sleeping, herbal remedies, no screens before bed, later bedtimes, earlier bedtimes, aromatherapy, white noise, comforters, black out curtains. We abided by every rule in the baby sleep books. And then we tried BREAKING every rule in those god damn books too. Nothing. She kept waking and crying.

All those moments had added up, and taken a toll on our marriage, our careers, relationships and our mental health.

Friends and colleagues would often remark, "I don't know how you do it". Well, we weren't DOING IT. We were just treading water.

A sleep study is designed to pick up any physical issue impacting the patient’s sleep - sleep apnoea, a breathing issue, enlarged tonsils or adenoids, tongue tie.

We were confident Rose wasn't suffering any of those issues. But we needed an explanation for why she still didn't sleep.

After an hour of screaming in hospital that night, Rose eventually gave up and passed out.

The nurse on duty tipped toed into the room and placed his hand on my shoulder - his grip very different to the one I had on Rose for the sixty minutes prior.

He smiled. No words between us. Barely any eye contact. BUT his face said it all. I felt like I wasn't alone - despite the most lonely, agonising hour of my life.

He must have given that smile to dozens of parents over the years in that sleep clinic.

It was a rough night. I slept on a fold-out arm chair. Rose was restless and moaned and whimpered BUT by normal standards, she had a good night. It was hell though.

She finally woke up to start her day just before 5am. She wanted to go home. So did I.

A "restaurant style breakfast" was due to be served at 6am on our ward. By that time, we'd already battled our way through Sydney's pre-peak hour traffic, and were sitting in a lukewarm bath, bleary eyed, trying to scrub off all the residual medical tape and glue.

Weeks later we got a diagnosis - parasomnia. Night terrors, sleep walking and talking all fall into the same category. It's a state of half awake, half asleep that tends to be exacerbated during her REM sleep cycle. On a good night, it means Rose is restless and talks in her sleep. On a bad night - horror vivid nightmares.

She will grow out of it one day - maybe tonight, maybe in ten years.

A prescription paediatric sedative is the preferred option of treatment by specialists BUT, it's not ours as parents.

We can try waking Rose around 11pm at night - before the rollercoaster of distress starts. It's a way to reset her sleep clock, but it's no guarantee fix. And it goes against every logical thought we have – to wake her up, so that she sleeps more soundly. BUT it’s worth a shot.

We've been prescribed melatonin for Rose too - and while it doesn't stop her from waking, it does make her slightly more relaxed and less restless at night.

During that awful night in the hospital – during all the screaming and fighting and shoulder pinning – there was one moment I completely forgot about.

When we returned to the specialist to get our results, she pulled up a photo on her computer – an image taken from the CCTV camera positioned above Rose’s hospital.

It was the moment, when she’d become so distressed, so inconsolable that I gave up fighting her, and just crawled into bed with her and cuddled her. That was when she finally fell asleep.

The doctor wanted me to have the photo – to remind me that for every moment of lost sleep in the last two and a half years, there are priceless moments that you wouldn’t trade for the world.

I didn’t want the photo – I thought I didn’t need it. We play out that scenario of cuddling and crying multiple times every night.

BUT a few weeks later, after a shocking night of sleep, I changed my mind and emailed the doctor asking for the photo.

Because that picture says so much that all these words can’t … that one day, we’ll be ok.