Who needs an alarm clock when you’ve got a tiny person coming into your bed in the wee hours of every single morning? Every. Single. Morning.

I already suffer from insomnia – waking in the middle of the night with one worry or another – so these tiny hands touching my face at 3:00 AM really weren’t welcome, as cute as they might have been. I found it hard to go back to sleep, and so I was starting every work day extremely sleep-deprived. I became short tempered with my co-workers and my kids. I became a person I didn’t ever want to be.

I became desperate. I tried everything to help my children sleep through the night – blackout shades in their rooms, warmer comforters for their beds, glasses of water on their bedstand (for middle-of-the-night water requests), melatonin, warm baths every night, and more. I had stopped water intake two hours before bed, I had put a digital clock in their rooms, taught them to read time, and made threats about coming in before 6:00 AM. I had begged. I had escorted them back to their rooms in hopes that they’d learn their lesson. But the vast majority of the time, I just opened my covers, let them in, and pray that we both go back to sleep. This was rarely successful though.

After months and years of going through this, I have finally landed upon a solution that works for my family. Call me a quitter, but I’ve made a bed for them on my floor.

It was a matter of survival, people. I put a spare pillow down, one of those cheap foam eggshell pads, and a blanket, and I welcomed the little night invaders in. With one caveat: they are not allowed to wake me up.

So now, two or three times a week, I wake up with my real alarm clock at 6:30 AM to see two little lumps on my floor, sound asleep. And what’s even better? I’ve slept too. Happy endings for all.