Due only to many pushy comments by MIL and Pants regarding the fact that Meimei still sleeps with me, I picked up Dr. Sears's book on baby sleeping, thinking I could get some good advice on getting Meimei to sleep in her own crib, or maybe an idea on when that would best be accomplished.
Little did I know, he is a strong advocate of baby sleeping with you until they are, like, 5. And that you shouldn't let kids cry in their crib, alone. Man, do I feel guilty now for allowing Kitten to do just that. Although she cried when we held her at the time, too, so it didn't seem to matter where she was.
So Dr. Sears said that I should sleep with Meimei for YEARS until she is ready to go into her own bed, and then we could put a bed on the floor next to our bed, and then slowly move her into another room. Are you kidding me?
So here is what I have decided. Meimei appears to be fine on her own, so she will start going into the crib after she is asleep for naps all this coming week, even if she only sleeps for 15 minutes at a time. It will suck and I will get nothing done and she will be cranky and tired, but I think it has to be done. She is asleep on the couch now, so I will leave her be and sleep on the other couch until she wakes up to eat. I will try this for at least her first night sleep session each night this week and will see what happens.
The single, overriding reason I don't want to put her in her crib at this point is convenience (and also my secret guilt about the one screw missing in the crib that I have not replaced yet because it involves calling the company instead of just ordering it over the internet). During naps, when she sleeps on the couch she is very accessible and I can put a nuk in her at the first sign of stirring so she stays asleep. And also, she seems to sleep longer on the couch. But, okay, we only put her in the crib twice, so I don't have much of a base of data to go on. At night, I think she sleeps longer next to me, which gives me more sleep, and I can catch her before she is fully awake so she can just feed and fall asleep again. Convenience and more sleep for everyone involved.
But I will attempt this anyway, as I am back to work in just over a month and Meimei will have to take naps in a crib. Yikes. I hope we don't get kicked out of daycare.
4 comments:
You know, convenience and more sleep are two very good reasons if you ask me! But good luck with the crib sleeping. I think it's the Weissbluth book that everyone told me they liked. We transistioned pretty easily at about 4 months, but before that Attila was napping on the couch too. But I also believe that sleep issues, like sleeping independently and sleeping through the night, are developmental milestones that you can't force anymore than you can force a baby to walk earlier than she's ready.
I agree, and reading the chapter on how babies sleep made all of Kitten's sleep episodes make sense.
http://partners-in-parenting.typepad.
com/pip/sleep/index.html
I really like the sensible, realistic, been-there ideas from these ladies. They're very much in the "different things work for different kids" camp, but are nice for ideas for things to try. Mary just wrote recently about her two babies and what different sleepers they are.
We eventually had to do the cry it out with Pumpkin when we just couldn't take the up-many-times-in-the-nightness. It was tough for the first two or three days (especially for the first hour of sobbing the first night), but it was SO much better after that.
Good luck, sister!
I like the whole convience thing too, but if you want to try to get her in the crib, are there any couch cushions that may actually fit into the crib that you could try to use at night? Also maybe something that smells like you? It would remind her senses of a safe place she likes to be.
I also wouldn't worry about her sleeping in her crib at daycare because
1) They don't always act the same there as they would at home.
2) We have some kids who don't fall asleep in their cribs and need to either be rocked to sleep or need to be put to sleep in a bouncy seat or something. I don't think that daycare is going to be terribly upset if she doesn't fit the normal routine at first, or are they that picky? It usually takes a while for a caregiver and a child to work things out and what works for one caregiver may not neccassarily work for another.
In a nutshell my advice would be to worry about it if you want to, but if it's not detrimental to anyone I wouldn't worry about it too much. Your instincts on what to do are best suited to you deciding what's best.
Good luck!
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