Struggling through with joy... |
kind of.
Struggling through with joy... |
I am accidentally one of those bad mothers you read about in parenting magazines: the mother who doesn't sleep train her baby. With T, I followed the advice of those parenting articles to the letter. He was a good sleeper naturally, which one article states always happens if parents don't get in the way. I have a feeling this will be my challenge throughout parenting: getting in the way of my own child.
R refuses to sleep through the night. Lately, she refuses to sleep for more than 2 to 3 hours without the comfort of mommy or daddy holding her, or me nursing her. Because I'm exhausted and I hate letting her cry, I almost always scoop her up and lay her between us, where she snuggles in and promptly falls back asleep. I realize she is not learning to self-soothe. She's learning to mom-soothe. Now my champ sleeper is also having issues. Issues with the baby sleeping in our room, in our bed. Last night he cried hysterically and begged for someone to sleep with him. We tried to convince he and the cat they would be good bedmates, but neither agreed. So daddy squeezed onto the other half of T's twin bed and slept with him until I quietly came in and woke him, not wanting to be alone in our bed. Which is why I completely understand my son's anger and angst at having to sleep alone. Even the dog gets to sleep in our room, in her crate, but still, in our room. I suspect T would happily camp on our floor just to be part of the sleeping action. I don't know what the solution is. I think we have some hard weeks of sleep training R up ahead, and I hope T will be content to stay in his room knowing his sister is on the other side of the wall in her room once we get her transitioned. Many people would suggest we just become co-sleepers, but that won't work for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, my husband would not sleep. He's a light sleeper to begin with, and two kids in the bed would be a recipe for no sleep. Our bed isn't big enough, and it's so old and saggy we'd all be piled in the middle. Plus, it's our bed. It is the last and only place left in the house that is just for us, for our marriage, for our two bodies tucked together. I miss him when we can't cuddle before sleep. We will just continue sleeping with one or the other of the kids until we manage to get them sleeping on their own, in that imperfect way most real parents do things. In the meantime, I'm trying to enjoy the fact that my mere presence is enough to comfort my sweet baby, who settles right into sleep when she feels me next to her. I know I will long for that power when she's older.
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