WRITTEN ON OCT. 1, 2009
Two nights ago I did something I never thought I woiuld do. I put my 17 month old co-sleeping, breastfed, feed-on-demand firstborn baby in his crib. It was a little after 4 am and he had been up all night, crying to nurse (we’re in the middle of weaning) and having temper tantrums. These nighttime jags have been going on for well over 3 weeks now, every night. ALLL night. We had been losing so much sleep it was ridiculous. What was strange was that even when he was a newborn we never had troubles at night with Jack-Evan. He’s always been the perfect sleeper, never even crying a bit at night!
Something had to give.
And give it did. You can read about the entire experience here. But if you’re just browsing and don’t care to read deeper, here’s the short form – my son is weaning since I’m pregnant with #2 and began to dry up. Daytime weaning is pretty much done, but night time weaning is a booger. He’s been waking up every 15 minutes begging to nurse. After a 3 hour final “battle” I picked him up, walked into his room, put him in his crib at 4:15 am (two nights ago), and there he stayed until 8:30 am. Cry? Oh yes. He howled like a pack of wolves under a full moon for 2 whole hours. I cried about that long too.
But as I said, something had to give.
Yesterday morning, upon gathering my very-happy-to-see-mommy son from his crib, I knew that our family situation was about to change forever. Co-sleeping was never something I planned to last permanently (heaven forbid we still co-sleep in high school!), but still, he’s only 17 months old now. He’s still my baby…my first born…my current only. My heart.
Yet it was time. He was no longer happy in our big king size bed. He was getting very little sleep, Mommy was getting very little sleep, and poor Daddy (who gets up at 5 am for work) was the most unfortunate of all of us. My mommy instincts told me it was time to move on in life and that Jack-Evan was ready for his own space.
By himself.
When my husband Kevin arrived home from work last night, I had a talk with him over dinner about the changes that needed to take place. He was completely on board with it all (especially since it meant he would get a full nights rest again soon). Plus we both hated to see our little boy so unhappy!
Later on, when it was time for bed, we gathered Jack-Evan up, gave him his bath, brushed his teeth, put on his pajamas, read him a story….
Then laid him in “Jack’s new bed!”. We also handed him the “new NU NU” (what we call a bottle of milk…since Jack-Evan called nursing “nu nu”).
Beside his crib was a blow up mattress and my own pillow where I planned to sleep (for at least a week).
Just as I thought, Jack-Evan threw a huge tantrum. But contrary to my other thought, this one only lasted 30 minutes! As I lay there on the floor in the dim Winnie-The-Pooh nightlight glow, I ignored my screaming son, with just an occasional ”Mommy’s here, Mommy loves you” to reassure him he wasn’t alone. It was hard, but at least with each passing minute I knew we were marching towards a new stage in life.
Finally the room grew quiet, with the exception of a fan we always have going for “white noise”. It was only 30 minutes into this new lifestyle change…and he was already asleep.
It took me a good 2 more hours to fall asleep. Afterall, having slept 17 months snuggled close to my child and the 9 months before that with my child snuggled inside of me, things seemed a bit odd. But I finally fell asleep.
This morning as the 8 am sunlight streamed into the room, I heard a tiny “Mama? Maaaama?”. I turned over and there he was, looking at me through the bars of his crib. Awake and happy. I realized with a start that he had slept the entire night without waking.
My instincts were right….It was time for change, and we had now survived the first full night of the transition.
