Last night, my youngest son slept in his very own bed all.night.long. I know some of you are rolling your eyes at this…thinking that if the kid was being raised properly that this wouldn’t be a big deal. But we learned early on that this child had high needs at night and in order to allow us *all* to get the amount of sleep we needed, we allowed him to sleep in our bed when he needed it.
When I was pregnant with him, we upgraded to a king size bed. My oldest was having adjustment issues (we’d moved to a new city, were expecting a new baby, and it was hard on him) and was wanting to sleep with us a lot. There really wasn’t enough room for all of us (including my ever expanding belly) in a queen and since we needed a new mattress anyway upgrading seemed like a no-brainer. He managed to get resettled and went back to his own bed, and my husband and I enjoyed the extra space. And then my second arrived.
He slept pretty well for the first 4 months of his life. There were the usual night wakings, but things were really improving and we were losing the zombie-ness of new parenthood. And right on schedule, he was bit with the 4 month old “I’m not going to sleep anymore.” bug. It’s pretty common at that age. Which sucks, because that’s generally about the time you’ve gotten settled into a good routine and start seeing improvements. It may be common, but it’s not at all cool. So at that point I started bringing him into bed with us at his first waking. I’d nurse him back to sleep while I fell asleep and we all got more rest. And I’d continue to nurse. All.night.long. It wasn’t terrible…we got a few hours to ourselves in bed (though I’m still not sure why we needed them at that stage!) and we all ended up with more sleep. But it made it increasingly difficult to get him to lay in his crib. At some point I gave up on that and just nursed him down every night in our bed. And there he stayed.
When we moved into this house when he was 9 months old, I was determined to get him back into the crib. He finally had his own room and I thought that would help. Nope…as soon as his sleeping butt hit the crib mattress he was up again. Screaming. And wouldn’t stop until someone came and got him. I am not a fan of leaving a baby to “cry it out” (CIO) but I do think in some circumstances it can work with minimal trauma to everyone. Not here. My kid would scream his head off all night long if we let him. He is not one of those for whom CIO would work. So back into our bed he came. I started night weaning after his 1st birthday. I needed to be able to take better pain meds for my kidney stones and nursing him all night long was not allowing me to do that. So we did sort of a boot camp with him. I would nurse him to sleep in the queen size bed in his room, then my husband handled night wakings. It was hard, but someone soothed him and after a while he got the message. But always something would interfere (illness, teething, vacations, etc) and we’d be back to the old pattern and have to start over again.
And then I got pregnant. And you might say I *really* encouraged him to wean. I nursed him for the last time about a week after his second birthday. The sleeping situation had improved. He would go down with some snuggling and quiet time in the big bed in his room, then join us sometime in the night. I could deal with that. And that’s been the pattern pretty much ever since. Occasionally illness or changes in routine disrupt us slightly, but for the most part it works. And now he’ll even sleep in the toddler bed which is in the room he shares with his big brother. We usually have to move him there after he falls asleep on the couch, in our bed, or on one of us, but he will sleep in there at least part of the night.
When I woke up this morning, something felt wrong. I was alone in the bed. My husband is usually up before everyone else, so that was no surprise. But usually there’s a small snuggly child right next to me. No child. So I got up and checked his bed…and was shocked to see him fast asleep on his little toddler bed. Even 12 hours later, I can’t believe he stayed in there all night. A minor miracle in our house. I probably can’t expect it to repeat any time soon, but it was nice for the one night it lasted!
