Oooh, Strollerderby. Y’all have opened a can ‘o’ worms today. I’ve been in at least 800 million arguments online about whether or not to co-sleep with your baby. I used to be staunchly pro-co-sleeping, largely because it worked so well for my family.
My chidren Would. Not. Sleep. Alone. Period, no way, nohow. It was terrible. I tried to get every single one of my kids to sleep in a crib and every single one of them flatly refused. You would think that there were snakes and lepers in the crib, as badly as they protested.
So I took them into my bed, which made nursing 100% easier and I got tons of sleep. It was fantastic. But when my youngest, SpiderMan, hit about 12 months, he did the same thing Mike’s daughter does in his post.
He kicked, he rolled, his head went spinning. All he needed was pea soup spewing everywhere to get us to call The Exorcist. So we had to get him into his crib. Somehow. We went the route of rocking him for hours and hours. That sucked.
So then we got us a routine. Bath, teeth, story, hug, kiss, snuggle, turn the SpongeBob light on, close the door. And we’d wait. Sometimes, pathetic little wails would come from his room. Not the "Ouch!" wails, not the "I am REALLY MAD!" wails. No, the pathetic wails like, "Awww, man, I don’t want to go to bed right now. I think you guys are having a party without me. Can’t I come to the party?" wails. These would go on for about 2.25 minutes and then, silence. Amazing.
It was then that I began to rethink my militant co-sleeping advocacy position. "Maybe," I thought, "some kids are better co-sleepers than others." It was a major revelation. Kids are different, and respond differently and need different types of parenting. Wow. Who’da thunk it?
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I always heard you should never let your kids sleep with you. Not because it was wrong but because the habit would be too hard to break. But I will tell you this…My husband left for 3 months to train for a new job out of state when my 3rd child was 10 days old. You can be she was in my big king size be with me every night. I had to get sleep. Being a single parent to a newborn girl and two toddler boys was enough to just about put me over the edge so I'm all about whatever works! To each his own and etc.
Posted by: Kristen | June 25th, 2007 4:48 pm |
My three year old has never, ever liked to sleep in bed with us. Sometimes I would like her to but she gets too excited and wants to play when she's between mommy and daddy. Oddly, if we're out of town, she will share a bed with me with no problem.
Posted by: Naomi | June 25th, 2007 10:42 pm |
My girls would use every opportunity and excuse to sleep with Mommy & Daddy. Youngest one still would. And honestly, I like it when they do because at their age now (11 & 16), it gives us a good excuse to talk.
Posted by: Kathy T. | June 26th, 2007 9:19 pm |