O, To Sleep!

Pin It

He also does interpretive dance while he sleeps.

I had to make Jaron put himself to sleep without me tonight. I say "had" because for my sanity and his emotional and physical health, it just had to be that way.

We've moved his bedtime nursing session to the beginning of our routine instead of letting him nurse to sleep. He was clamping down, HARD, as he fell asleep and would wake up screaming, refusing to nurse again, and would be up for 2-3 hours if I tried to unlatch him before he was deeply asleep. Ouch.

He does ok, if I lay down with him to put him to sleep, or has done ok. The past couple of nights, he's used me as a way to keep himself awake. An 18 month old, can only go use the potty so many times during a 20 minute period! And hearing "I wuv oo, Mommy" is incredibly precious and sweet, but when it becomes a game of, if I say this then she can't get mad of me...it just loses a touch of the sweetness.

I finally just decided that I was too much of a distraction.

So I told Jaron to stay in his bed, I loved him, stay in the bed. And I walked out.

He was offended, he cried, then he tried crying that he needed to go potty, then I heard pizza, apples, something I couldn't quite make out, and then he started to cry for me. By this point he was out of bed.

I went in, picked him up, gave him a kiss and repeated, stay in the bed, I love you, stay in your bed.

We repeated that 3 times, with varying amounts of crying or just talking to himself, or me, or Aedyn (who was asleep in his own bed) and once I called into his room for him to get in bed. He tried a couple different cries, to see what I would respond to. But after about 45 minutes he fell asleep, in his bed, talking to his toy plane.

I'm not thrilled with, or proud of him crying it out. But I don't even feel like it was true CIO, because it wasn't. When he called for me I went in to show him that I was there, but I also didn't stay.

I'm not 100% sure that this is what we will start doing every night. I'm sure it might be different if Aedyn was awake. But I'm ready for Jaron to start working towards going to sleep on his own. I don't know how long it's been since I got so much done after the boys were in bed, usually bedtime drains me so much that I'm useless.

I guess we'll see how he sleeps tonight. I'm sure that will play a huge role in deciding if this new bedtime is for keeps or not.

When did your kids start putting themselves to bed? Did they do it alone or did you encourage them?

If you want to hear more about my 2 (not always) sleeping babies and the rest of the family you can follow us on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter!