Sleeping Solutions

It seems like no matter how late it is I need to read to get myself to sleep. I'm not sure when this started, but it seems to be pretty ingrained. Last night I went to bed and realized I'd finished my book, so I pulled out The Attachment Parenting Book by Dr. Sears. I'm a fan of Dr. Sears approach to parenting and feel like I have a pretty good idea about his methods from the other books I've read of his, but this had better insight into the whole co-sleeping thing.

Somewhere along the way I decided that co-sleeping was over. It was getting more difficult to keep Charlotte asleep at night with me so close by because she wanted to keep nursing. To make matters more difficult she'd wake up whenever the hall light would shine under our bedroom door. So we decided to set up her crib hoping that if she wasn't so close to me she'd sleep better. We moved her a couple months ago and it has yet to be better. If anything it's worse.

I was so baffled by this thinking that a baby this old should easily be able to sleep in a crib on her own. I would have continued to try to keep her in her crib if I hadn't read the chapter on co-sleeping last night. I was reminded that if something isn't working you should change it. I'm willing to admit now that sleeping in the crib isn't working. I was resistant to having her back in our bed because I wake up every hour to feed her. When I really think about it, she wakes up every hour or two in her crib anyway. At least if she's in bed with me I don't have to get up and she goes back to sleep without any trouble.

Sleeping methods work different for every family but I think we should probably go back to this one. There are lots of different opinions on sharing your bed. For me, I do it to maintain my sanity! There are also ideas floating out there that it helps baby feel more secure early on and thus more secure and trusting of their parents as they get older. I'm not sure how much of this is really measurable, but it sounds good to me anyway.

Perhaps the crib will work out later on, and I'm starting to think that perhaps we moved her too soon. It should have been pretty obvious to me when she'd scream in her crib and immediately stop and nuzzle into my neck the second I picked her back up again. So I'm going to listen to what my baby wants because she is still my baby after all and it won't be long before she doesn't want to sleep with me let alone nuzzle!