The past week has been one of hard choices and silent rewards around the Blockhead house. Fred is now weighing in at just under18 pounds and as a result he is out growing things at an alarming rate. The car seat limit is 20lbs so it’s on the verge of having to be swapped for the next size up. The swing no longer puts him to sleep like it used to. Ever since he discovered the joys of sitting in an upward position (he can almost get there by himself), lying on his back is a big no-no. These are just minor secondary tools in our ever-changing utility belt…the biggest cause for alarm has been that he no longer can fit in his bassinet. He’s simply too big for his bed.
So our choices were A) sleep in the bed with us or B) learn to sleep in the crib in his room.
A)Is a sure fire, works every time, guaranteed way to get him to sleep. Two seconds next to momma and he is out like a light. The downside is that momma doesn’t sleep cause Fred smacks her in the face all night. Either that or whenever something in the bed moves, she wakes herself up thinking the baby is about to be rolled over on.
B)Not only allows momma to sleep all night (in case your wondering the boot is still on), but also thanks to the handy dandy monitoring system we still feel like baby is in the room with us. Plus this method requires at least a 30 minute routine of giving baby a bath, putting on his pajamas, feeding him a bottle, and having a story read to him all before he even gets into the bed. That’s almost an 1 hour of solid family time every night!! The only negative…and this is a major negative to some people…he screams his lungs out until he falls asleep from exhaustion or we cave and pick him up.
So we could either not get any sleep at all or have him sleeping in our bed until he’s 18 …or we can teach him to sleep in his own bed and still manage to catch a few winks ourselves.
It was a hard choice to make to start with and now that we are on night 3 of option B, it is just getting harder. Everything and everybody in support of this method insists that after a week the little guy will just pass out as soon as he hits the pillow. He does seem to be sleeping better once he actually falls asleep. I just hope that the end of the week we aren’t still wondering if we are just making a big mistake.
1 comment:
I've heard through the grapevine that they eventually get used to their own bed and for the folks who let the child sleep with them, ya, they're about 18 when they finally leave the bed and you and Mrs. Blockhead look at each other and wonder who each of you are because there hasn't been any "fun" in the bedroom for a LONG time.
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