Transitions

I never intended to have a family bed. To the best of my knowledge, I never, ever slept with my parents, and I fully intended that my babies would spend a short amount of time in my room in a bassinet and then transition to their own cribs in their own rooms when they outgrew the bassinet. (I also never intended to have four kids, so the own rooms thing worked well.)

Everything went according to plan until Trout was three months old, when she developed RSV. We spent three days not sleeping at all, just staying up all night staring at her to make sure she kept breathing. Once she recovered, I went back to putting her to sleep in the crib, but BigDaddyFish had a little Daddy Freakout and decided he couldn't sleep with her so far away from us, so he went and got her and brought her to our bed. I argued against it for a while, but frankly it was easier to nurse, and she was a good kid to share a bed with - she pretty much stayed put all night long, no kicking or shoving. She shared our bed until she was 16 months old and we knew her brother was on his way.

The move from our bed and room to the crib in her own room was wrenching but thankfully over in a week. The first night she screamed and cried for three hours. BDF slept on the floor beside the crib so he could soothe her periodically and she could adjust to the crib before she was alone. The second night, she cried for 45 minutes, and then sat in the crib giving us the stinkeye every time we walked by the room to check on her for about four hours. The third night she cried maybe ten minutes, then went to sleep after about an hour. Within a week, BDF was out of her room and back in our bed and Trout was sleeping by herself. She didn't stay in the crib very long, because we needed the crib for her brother and we didn't want to kick her out of the crib when he was born. We were idiots, and in hindsight we should have just bought another crib. But we moved her to a toddler bed instead.

Then we had the two hour ritual of me reading book after book and then sitting beside her bed so she could fondle her favorite comfort object as she drifted off to sleep, my hair being that comfort object. After too many nights of me dozing off and waking with a crick in my neck three hours later, I wised up and bought her a doll with hair, and she learned to fondle it instead of me. She later got another doll with hair, which she still sleeps with every night.

Little Man was easy, because he really didn't do well sleeping with us. He helicopters around, wanders all over the place, and talks in his sleep. It didn't take us long at all to discover that we all slept better with him in the crib. By the time he had outgrown the bassinet we had finally relaxed about his birth circumstances, so the transition to the crib at about four months went smoothly.

Sunny was a champion nurser, so she slept with us for years. We started trying to make the transition to her own bed when she was just shy of two and we bought her a toddler bed. We set it up in the corner of our bedroom, and went through an agonizing six month process to get her actually moved to the bed and then the bed moved from our room to the room she shares with her sister. She was still nursing at the time for a part of it, though she had weaned down to once a day. BDF and I went on a trip just before her second birthday and through that we were able to cut her off and finally wean. She still tries to come to our bed at least one night a week, but now I'm able to promise her a sticker in the morning if she stays in her bed all night and that works.

Which brings us to Nemo. I have been trying desperately to get him weaned; I want my body back, after three full years of pregnancy and more than 70 months of nursing, but he has other ideas. I also want some sleep, and I don't think that's asking too much.

Nemo has been sleeping in our bed with us since he was born. It was easier to nurse, and really, we had no place to put him. We have a three bedroom townhouse. The house itself is huge, and we have a lot of living space, and the master bedroom is a good size. But the other two bedrooms are really small. Trout and Sunny are crammed into one room, Sunny still in her toddler bed, Trout in a twin bed, but with the windows in that room we can't really make any changes in there - the windows come down to within 24 inches of the floor. Beds can't go underneath them because my kids would find it rather too easy to jump through the window. Little Man is crammed into a bedroom little bigger than your average walk-in closet, with a closet that is only 6 inches deep for most of its width. At about age 1 I set the crib up at the foot of our bed, and we tried to get Nemo to sleep in it, but he decided it was baby prison rather than a comfy, cozy place to sleep, and he would scream til he puked. Crying it out, which I certainly would have considered, wasn't really an option because sooner or later, we had to come to our own room to sleep, and he'd just start back up where he left off. So back into our bed with us. No one has been getting much sleep because Nemo will wake up in the night and need us to help him get back to sleep, either through playing or through nursing, and he wanders all over the bed and kicks and shoves and is a lot stronger than his brother. I want my bed back to just me and my husband.

Over time, I've been putting him in the crib at other times than bedtime, just to get him used to it. I'd fold laundry on my bed while he played in the crib. A couple of times Superbabysitter was able to get him to go to sleep in the crib, though he really won't reveal his secrets as to how. I'd been asking BDF to put Nemo to bed, because if the Nummies were around he asked for them, but was okay without them if they weren't an option. Slowly, over a course of months, BDF worked on getting Nemo to sleep in the crib. And in a stroke of genius that only a dad would think of, I think, one night he gave Nemo the Gameboy with a Little Einsteins game in it, a game so easy that you really only have to push one button to make it do anything and Nemo can manage to play it well enough to keep it going. He kissed Nemo goodnight, layed him down in the crib, covered him up, and let him play the Gameboy til he fell asleep. And he did.

So now, a couple of nights a week my son sleeps through the night. Yes, he's two (yeah, he had a birthday this past weekend) and should have been doing it all along, but he'd wakeup in the night and wow - Nummies! Think I'll grab a snack! and sit up and smack me in the face (literally!) shouting "Mom! Mom! Nummies!" until I rolled over and ponied up. He doesn't do that now, because they aren't right there in his face. Some nights he'll get up and yell at us until one of us brings him into bed with us, but sometimes BDF is able to get him to lay back down and go back to sleep by rubbing his back and telling him to go back to sleep. We also discovered a deep affinity for glowsticks, so sometimes we mix it up with the Gameboy and give him a glowstick. Best of all, as long as I keep the girls covered up, I can put him to bed without him asking to nurse, provided he didn't nap too late during the day.

Now, I'm getting more sleep, though thanks to my husband, still not enough. But more than I used to. It's been so nice that BDF is now thinking more seriously about what we need to do in this economy to get moved to a bigger house, where Little Man and Nemo can share a room and the hormones girls can have their own rooms, because he's liking being able to snuggle his wife with something other than his foot since there's no kid in the way. His wife's kinda liking it, too.

Comments

[Agincourtdb]

My only secret (vis-a-vis getting him to sleep in the crib) is that I'm not mommy or daddy. He only makes a fuss because he'd rather be with you guys. If you guys aren't there, and he's tired enough, he'll go down. :-)

[hokgardner]

Despite my initial resolve to not do it, I moved Ella into our bed when she was 5 weeks old because it was the only way I could get her to sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time. We tried to have Lily in bed with us, but she wasn't interested - she liked her own space. Campbell was such a good sleeper that we never felt the need to have him in our bed, and so far Teeny E is doing just fine in her cradle. I consider us lucky that we've had such an easy time, aside from Ella, with kids and sleeping.

It's funny how each kid is so different.

[BananaBlueberry]

This is tough...
the only HELPFUL ADVICE that I can offer (since we have 1 and he loves his own room)
is: it takes 4 days to break a habit- only 4 days (officially)...
the other thing: you may want to just start talking about how cool it is to have 'your own room', 'you and your sister's own room' etc. and make them start thinking that 'big boys' do this- you see where I'm going?

GOOD LUCK :) I DO know about 'doing whatever you can' to get a child to sleep :)
xo :)