Let him sleep.

I’m not going to lie, or feel any guilt or shame in admitting this:

Mason still sleeps in my bed. Not only does he still sleep in my bed, he’s almost 18 months old and he still doesn’t even pretend to sleep through the night.

I don’t mind. I feel deep down that as long as he wakes to nurse at night, and as long as he feels he needs me, that we are doing the right thing and that he is exactly where he belongs. The few times that he has slept through the night (in his pack-n-play right next to my bed) I never sleep well. I’m up all night checking on him or waiting for him to wake up.

I know bed sharing and co-sleeping isn’t for everyone, but it’s always been the way our kiddos have slept as babies before they would start sleeping through the night. And up until Mason it wasn’t any big deal. With the big boys it was just me and them, and then with Bella, and Mason at first, it was us and them. I’m pretty sure John enjoys snuggly baby loves more than me – this is probably because they aren’t trying to latch on to him when they snuggle him.

But John has now been out of our bed since February and I really want him back in it. All of us getting a good sleep is the most important this to both of us, so John sleeping on the couch hasn’t been a fight or argument or point of contention. It just is what it is. Moving Mason out of our room isn’t an option since he’d be keeping the other kids up that way, so we went with what we could do.

This leaves me feeling really torn. I LOVE co-sleeping. I LOVE nighttime nursing. But, I really miss John being in the bed too.

One of our problems is that Mason hates his crib. He would start freaking out and screaming the moment we would set him down in it. Actually, he’d freak out any time we tried to put him to sleep in any room that isn’t ours. So I have a new goal – get Mason at least sleeping in his crib for naps by the time he turns 18 months.

We started today.

He only napped for about an hour – normally he sleeps 2-3 hours, but still, better than refusing to sleep in it at all! He wasn't too happy at first. He was angry pretend crying. (More just yelling, pause for a minute to see if I'm coming, yelling, pause for a minute, and repeat.) But it only lasted maybe 2 minutes. Then I heard thump and when I checked 5 minutes later he was asleep.

It’s a start, and we’ll see how he takes to it when it comes time for his afternoon nap.

Linking this up to the Tuesday Baby Link Up.
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