Oliver has slept with us pretty much since he was born until about a week ago. We're talking 17 months of all night access to Mom and Dad, but more importantly the boobs.
Peter and I have had a lot of reasons not to sleep train him, the two biggest ones were:
1. It is was easier to co-sleep when you are nursing a newborn. Getting out of bed when you only get to sleep in two hour increments,
if you're lucky, sucks.
2. We didn't have a room for him to go to because of the construction and of course that took 4 months longer then it should have.
So while Oliver got to sleep with us, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. I'm a bit cranky when I don't sleep well and I haven't been sleeping well since I was 4 months pregnant. We're going on two years here where I haven't had more then 4 hours in a row of sleep and that 4 hours only happened twice.
It was time. It was
way past time.
After one night of success, we all got super sick and Oliver came right back to bed with us. Last week we started again. The book says if you're transitioning out of co-sleeping into a child's own room and crib (that'd be us), to spend a couple of nights soothing him however he needs and be prepared to spend some time on the floor in his room.
It was a long week. There were lots of wake-ups, I went and nursed him the first wake up and then Peter went back each additional time to get him back to sleep. Eventually, Peter spent every night from 4 am on on the floor of Oliver's room with his hand touching the baby. I missed him, but it was nice to have all that space in bed again. But more importantly I felt really guilty that he was sleeping on the floor with the whiny baby.
Last night I decided to re-read the book (Sleep Easy Solution) and we got tough. Oliver didn't like it. He cried on and off, mostly on, for 90 minutes. We,really Peter, went in a few times, told him we loved him, didn't touch him, and left. That just pissed him off. I did it once and seeing my tiny man screaming and reaching for me broke my heart, I delegated that job to Peter, and had some wine. I would have had more but it was the last glass in the last bottle in the house.
Of course Oliver was fine but in my Mom state I feared the worst and it brought me to tears.
What if he was mad at us and didn't love us in the morning? -He was all smiles and cuddles like usual.
What if the world ended, earthquake happened, someone snuck in and stole him, fire, flood, war, etc. and his last memory of his parents was them abandoning him? - Well the world didn't end last night. Oliver was still alive and in his bed this morning.
Overall I think we did ok. He did wake up once and Peter continued with the verbal check-ins and Peter fell asleep outside of Oliver's room. When he woke up about half an hour later, all was quiet on the western front. Our little man woke up for his day at 7am ready to go, we all survived night one of sleep training.
