Raincity Mama

The day came and we (finally!) moved the kids into their own room. We have co-slept with the kids since they were born. Even in the hos­pi­tal I’d sneak a baby into my bed. It was just so much eas­ier to nurse them hav­ing them right next to me and I got more sleep!

As they grew older they’d go through growth spurts, either phys­i­cal or emo­tional and I’d tell my hus­band that I’d had it and that we were mov­ing them out. He’d sup­port me and ask me to for­mu­late a plan and then he’d help. We’d get through the spurt and the kids would set­tle back to an accept­able sleep­ing pattern.

We are at the tail end of another growth spurt that has been par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult. That cou­pled with the fact that they will sleep for longer stretches if I’m not in the room made the deci­sion to move them into their own room eas­ier. Another huge decid­ing fac­tor is that I want to sleep with my hus­band again!

Let me explain. We had two queen size mat­tresses on the floor in our room. I slept on one mat­tress with the kids and my hus­band slept on the other. There were times when one of the kids would go cud­dle with him but for the most part they slept next to me. I’ve come to real­ize that I haven’t been mak­ing my hus­band a pri­or­ity and I think that sleep­ing next to him is a pretty big step in the right direction.

The kids have always had a room but they had never slept in it. I’m not sure what I’d envi­sioned. We had always intended that they would sleep in our room as new­borns but we never had a plan for mov­ing them out. Their room had a crib in it for a while. It came in handy for hold­ing clothes and toys for the babies! We tried the crib for a while once the babies got too big to sleep side-by-side in the co-sleeper attached to our bed. I’d lay our son down in the crib and he’d imme­di­ately start squawk­ing. It didn’t mat­ter how long I rocked him as soon as his head touched the mat­tress he’d complain.

The tran­si­tion went smoother than I expected. The first night we had been out and the kids fell asleep in the car so I slept in their room with them. The next night we went upstairs and ush­ered them into their “new room!” and had new stuffed ani­mals there to greet them. For the next few days they were quite excited and they talked about their room often.

It has been almost two weeks now and my daugh­ter now sleeps through the night!!! and my son sleeps a six or seven hour stretch. I think we lucked out with tim­ing it right and really, I think that the kids were ready and able to han­dle it. Plus, the hus­band and I actu­ally sleep together again! At this rate, we’re going to actu­ally have to start using birth con­trol again!

Related posts:

1. a plan for night weaning
2. Tor­ture by sleep deprivation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 7:46 am and is filed under parenthood, sleep is for the weak. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.