Really, I didn’t…
This is not an argument for or against bed-sharing or co sleeping, it is just my experience! I love my sleep, always have and probably always will! If only someone could invent a sleep bank where any hours of sleep over 8 per night could be stored and pulled out when needed, now that would be Nobel Prize worthy. Someone please start researching if this is possible because every new parent would gladly subscribe!!!
Since this cannot happen, how do we as parents get enough sleep? New parents hate hearing, “sleep when the baby sleeps”, yeah right, and how does everything else get done? I do encourage new parents to at least rest and maybe close their eyes for at least one of their baby’s naps each day. Sometimes a short 20 minute nap can leave you feeling rejuvenated and energized. Call a trusted friend to come over and love on the baby while you sleep or hire a sitter and make your date night, a sleep date! Sometimes you have to be creative!
Bed-sharing: baby is sleeping in the same bed with parent (s)
C0-sleeping: baby is sleeping in close proximity to parents but not in the same bed
My story started on a sleep deprived night when my second daughter was really new. After our first, we were pretty proud that she didn’t sleep with us and we felt like we could do it again. Night after night, same routine of nurse, burp, change and put in crib…run to bed, sleep hard…repeat however many times until morning. She decided however, that she REALLY liked snuggling and I really needed sleep, so I got less and less better at returning her to her crib at night.
Fast forward a few months to being mobile, she got a little bit better at sleeping for longer lengths of time in her crib, but let’s face it, my bed is always better. It is warm and cozy, smells like me and it is familiar. It is so much easier to just keep on sleeping in the side lying position after a nursing session.
Unless she was sick, scared or daddy was traveling, she always went to bed in her bed, but 5 out of 7 nights, she would end up in our bed for a few hours. For a long time, this really bothered me. I didn’t sleep as well, she is HOT and some part of her body was ALWAYS touching me. We started moving her back to her bed if we could catch her in stealth action. Sometimes we were successful while other times, she would come right back to snuggle.
As she got older, we tried reward charts with stickers and she was so proud of herself when she got to place a sticker on her chart after sleeping all night in her bed. She also got sneakier. We would wake up or roll over and realize she was in bed with no recollection of when she got there. We tried talking to her and letting her know that she disrupted our sleep when she got into bed with us and it was very important for mommy and daddy to get enough sleep.
We even put bells on our door so we could hear her approach but she figured out how to open our door very quietly. Since she is mostly asleep when she is cruising through the house, she has no idea what she is doing so it was easy to reroute her back to her bed if we could catch her. I’ll never forget a time when my parents were watching the girls and my dad said “wow, she really is stealthy, I never heard or saw her sneak in.” I know dad, I know!
As she gets older, I find myself welcoming her little warm cyclone body in my bed. She is still pretty stealthy though, she crawls in from the bottom of the bed or goes right over my husband and straight in between us where she feels safe and secure. She loves when her sister has sleep overs because she knows she gets to sleep with us. The smile and pure statisfaction on her face, says it all. Plus, they are quite angelic when sleeping. I know this will pass and soon I will no longer wake up to any hands or feet on me or her pushing us off the bed.
My sleep is still very important to me, but her need to jump in bed and snuggle trumps it all, plus I can sleep when I am dead!
The journey of parenting is funny..what works for one kid, won’t work for another! Sometimes your plans change out of necessity. I choose to pick my battles and this one is not worth fighting to me.
Let them be little…….