Adventures in Cosleeping

This is one of those posts that begins with the phrase, "before I had a baby I thought I would never..." And I will fill in the blank with "let my baby sleep in our bed."  I totally believe in many aspects of attachment parenting such as being attentive to my son's needs and cries, babywearing, breastfeeding, and feeding on demand.  However, I don't really buy into the concept that leaving a baby alone to sleep in a crib is somehow mean or neglectful.  Up until I was 27, when I began spending most nights with my then-boyfriend now-husband, I really didn't like sleeping in a bed with anyone else and much preferred to stretch out in my very own space.  So it made sense to me that Harrison would sleep best in his very own space too.  In fact, all of the handouts that we get from our pediatrician's office state just that: "your baby will sleep best in his own crib in his own room."

From the day we brought Harrison home from the hospital, we've broken every single rule there is about sleep. For the first four weeks of Harrison's life, he refused to be put down most of the time and especially when he was sleeping.  We slept together on the couch with Harrison snuggled up on my chest.  He has just never been a baby who conforms to the rules or the norms when it comes to where and when he will sleep.  So in a way I guess we shouldn't be too surprised to be where we're at now.

Case in point: napping on dad's shoulder!

So here's our current routine.  I do our bedtime routine, which consists of a bottle, stories, and songs.  I then kiss Harrison goodnight and put him in his crib drowsy but awake.  Most of the time he falls asleep pretty easily.  But after 45 minutes to an hour, the crying begins.  What happens next varies, but usually Harrison wakes up every hour until Jason and I go to bed ourselves.  Sometimes giving him his B settles him back down, but if not we do try to let him put himself back to sleep (read: Ferber) until we go to bed ourselves.  Once we are in bed, if Harrison isn't already in bed with us then he is the next time he wakes up.

On one hand, it is the sweetest thing to wake up in the night and have my baby right next to me.  He often sleeps with his hands stretched up over his head or with his lovey cradled under one arm, and to see him in this peaceful sleepy state reminds me of how lucky I am just to have him.  And it's much much much easier to soothe him back to sleep during his wakeups when he is right there next to us.

However, Harrison remains a restless sleeper for much of the night, and while sometimes I wake up on my own and get  to witness my peacefully sleeping baby, most of the time I wake up to hair pulling, or fussing, or smacks in the face, or fingers in my nose. Not quite so peaceful.

While I don't believe it's wrong for babies to sleep alone in cribs, I do believe that for whatever reason it's wrong for my baby right now.  I will keep putting him down in his crib because we do have a routine and I'd like to maintain it, and hopefully work on a little self-soothing early in the night.  I know how much of a comfort it is for me to have my husband (or in his absence, my dog) in bed with me when I wake up, and I guess right now Harrison needs that same sense of comfort.  When I wake up, someone is here with me.

Speaking of the dog...the long-term plan is most definitely to convince Harrison that Lucy is a phenomenal sleeping companion!  Talk about a win-win...