Sleeping with the enemy. - Part Three of The Crib Chronicles

So the saga continues.  I added subtitles to my original "crib" posts.  I wanted to title them Part One and Part Two and Part Three of the "Crib Chronicles Trilogy" because that seems to be the hip thing to do these days--write a trilogy (a la 50 Shades of The Girl Who Played With Hunger Games)--but I am not entirely sure that this is the last I have to say about all this.  Anyway, let's go back a bit....(great, now I need a prequel title....)

I have co-slept with all my babies.  Moo and Slim made the transition to their own beds in different ways, but without much fanfare.  As with a lot of things so far, The Geel is different.  This time, although I love snuggling up with her, I have found the need to sleep "train" (I really despise that word) her and get her into the crib.  While the cosleeping goes on, The Sarge (being a pretty light sleeper) usually sleeps elsewhere.  This time he has taken up residence on the couch.  (This was an especially PITA situation during the Lice Incidents of 2012.)

So for thirteen months now, he has slept on our couch and it has gotten pretty freakin' old.  Suffice it to say, we are all over it--not least of all The Sarge.  So when he left for his AT for the National Guard, I thought it was the perefect time to make the transition--he's not here to be disturbed by any blood-curdling screaming during the night (of which there was NONE, thankyouverymuch!) and he gets to come home to his bed!  Win-win!  So imagine my surprise when while lying in bed the other night (our first time in over a year, I might emphasize) he says, "I don't like her in there all night by herself."

Dumbass might be harsh, but I certainly was doing the mental facepalm when I heard that line.

HUH?!?  What I wanted to say at that point was this:  Honey, if you'd care to take your ass back out to the couch, I'd be happy to bring The Geel back into bed with me and risk her precious little life every morning as she repels off the side our bed.  And although I appreciate your opinion on the matter, since you don't really do anything in the way of helping me put the baby to bed, and since you don't have any alternatives to my "method," I'll not be considering your feelings in the matter and I'd thank you not to shit all over my way of doing it.  Or something along those lines.  But what I did was lie there in the dark and think about what I was gonna write in this post.

In reality, I kinda get what he's saying.  For those of you who never co-slept with your babies, it does feel kinda weird to just lay them down in a crib by themselves and leave them there.  I mean, I keep joking with him that this is what "normal" people do with their kids, but I do get what he's feeling.  And I'm certainly not saying that there is anything wrong with co-sleeping or crib sleeping, but right now, I honestly feel that she is safer in there.  We had gotten to a point where she was nursing so much at night that I wasn't sleeping enough at all, and therefore could barely open my eyes in the morning while she (being an early bird, like Slim) gets up at the crack of dawn trying to crawl off our pillowtop mattress by herself.  (Which, btw, she is pretty darn good at.  The mattress is as tall as she is and she quite skillfully backs herself down off the edge and grabs the comforter to slow her slide off the side.)  So until she figures out how to climb out, I believe her to be much safer in her crib.

Now as far as the matter of MY return to restful fulfilling sleep?  We're not there yet--which I'm sure is fodder for Part Four.  She still wakes up multiple (some nights many multiple) times a night to nurse, and although it's only been a few weeks, and the nursing does go rather quickly, and she goes back to sleep quite easily, I'd thought she (and I) would get much longer stretches of sleep by now.  I mean, a few nights she has gotten a three-hour stretch in at the beginning, but then has woken up every hour afterwards.  Every. Hour.

So we still have some kinks to work out, but I'd like to think it's working well enough so far.  Even the dog is happy--now that The Geel is out of the bed, The Sarge let LuLu back in.  Win-Win-Win?

~not so fast....~
The Thrill Is Gone--Part Four of The Crib Chronicl...