Sorry, a lot of this is copied from the bipolar check-in thread and the parenting forum. I am also sorry this is a long post. I'm beyond exhausted and at my wits' end.

My daughter (11 years old) had insomnia last night and kept getting more and more anxious as the night wore on, waking me and crying. She did not go to sleep until 5 or 5:30 AM. After she kept waking me, I could not go back to sleep after 2 AM. Woke her around 10:30 AM, had a sort of brunch and took her to school around noon (though she's still counted absent). I only got her to sleep giving her children's Benadryl, but this keeps happening more & more frequently (though usually not this extreme, and this is the 1st time I resorted to children's Benadryl).

I just don't know what to do to help her.

Truthfully, my daughter has never been a good sleeper. She never slept through the night as a baby, maybe not even most of the time as a 1 year old. I always had to nurse her to get her to sleep or to fall back to sleep, and naps, just forget it. Not even nursing helped with that. Wouldn't nap as a pre-schooler, and her sleep seems to be getting worse.

I am concerned too because I was never a good sleeper (even as a baby & toddler, I was a terrible sleeper according to my mother & grandmother). I don't remember ever not having sleep difficulties except while on psych meds. And I've heard difficulty sleeping can be associated with psych issues later on. I am bipolar, it runs on my mom's side of the family, again and again, and I worry my sleep problems may have meant there was something to look out for, though again, I had a lot of other issues that are common in eating disorders, and I was always a highly anxious, worried child, and I'm afraid my daughter has a lot of anxiety as well.

My daughter gets so anxious about insomnia on a school night, she is crying the later it gets and she still hasn't fallen asleep and knows there is school the next day. I never got so worked up I was crying about my insomnia as a pre-teen, even if it had me highly anxious. But last night, she was crying, whimpering off and on from midnight until nearly 5 AM (getting increasingly worse), which was when I finally gave in and had her take children's Benadryl, which thankfully worked.

But neither my husband nor I want to use medication to get her to sleep, and my husband even vetoed her pediatrician's suggestion of trying melatonin. My husband vetoed tht Benadryl last night, but after so many hours and with him asleep for the worst ones, I gave in. But I can't give her melatonin as the doctor suggested if my husband is against it. Ugh!