A big boy bed

We transferred Mr. B into a big boy bed 10 days ago.

He is doing amazing! I’m so surprised.

I guess I shouldn’t say that. I know he’s amazing. He always surprises me. So really, nothing should surprise me.

We had planned to start the transfer to solo sleeping sometime in April after we had redone the kiddos rooms and they each had a separate sleeping space (so they don’t wake each other, they’re both terribly light sleepers).

But sleep deprivation and the extremely selfish mental need to night wean finally got the best of me.

I 100% refused to let things be as traumatic as they were with H. There were lots of tears involved with her, even though I was always there, etc., etc., and I just told J straight up I wanted to give it a go, but if it was a traumatic event (for either of us!) I wasn’t going to do it (like said 1,245,234 night weaning attempts before this).

Well, B is all about the bed.

We set up H’s crib into the converted toddler bed. I was apprehensive since it doesn’t have a side rail and he’s a flailing bean, but we put down a rug with a huge comforter on the floor below him, and the few times he fell the first three nights, he was mostly unphased.

The first night he fell asleep ridiculously easy without nursing. I nursed him right before I laid him down, he was armed with a sippy cup and dream lite. He tossed back and forth a bit, and finally fell asleep with me kind of leaning over the bed and holding him in the crook of my arm. But I was easily able to escape. He woke up at 9pm, and 11pm, when I brought him back to bed with me.

The next night he fell asleep without me holding or touching him, just sitting beside his bed. He didn’t wake up until 11pm, and then again at 1pm, at which point he came to bed with Momma.

Of course, his 11pm wake up was a bit funny. I heard a thunk! and ran into his room, to find him on the floor. He stood up, looked at me, said, “Ow,” and then crawled into his bed all on his own and went right back to sleep.

This continued on for the next few days (minus the falling out of bed) until the night before we got Duckie. That night he slept straight through until 3am! If only I’d gone to bed before midnight. Agh!

And since Duckie’s arrival he’s slept straight through until 1am.

If you can’t tell, I’m not complaining.

All of this and he has 100% on his own given up night nursing until between 4 and 5am. At which point he nurses until we wake up, but this is far easier than the every 1-2 hours for 1-2 hours at a time he was doing previously (no joke).

And I certainly don’t expect him to sleep a solid 12 hours with no wakings or to make it in his own bed all night. His sister rarely does that at a month shy of 3. And that’s okay. I’m more than happy to be there when they need me. But I’d like them to sleep a bit on their own, too. That’d be cool.

Of course, now I’m getting him used to a bed he doesn’t get to keep past April since it will turn into his sister’s full sized bed. And I don’t think he’s quite ready for the twin sized bed as he’s still a roly poly, and it is significantly higher off the ground. I go round and round on whether we should buy him a proper bed now or just buy him a toddler bed to use for a year or two. I’m leaning toward toddler bed, but not too sure.

Anyway, I’m totally ready to have their bedrooms done so that everyone is stowed away in their own space and things seem a bit more complete around here. (A bit!)

But I am floored. Absolutely floored by how easy this transition has been thus far. I’m waiting for the huge hiccup or the something that goes wrong. Because it seems it’s been too easy to last.

Oh, and the very best part! He’s taking naps in that bed that are for longer than the 30-45minutes he’s dwindled down to since Christmas! He’s now sleeping 1.5-2 hours!

Okay, mostly this was just a “hoorah post.”

And I may very well have hoorahed too soon.

Oh, well.

We’ll always have Paris.

Why do my kids loathe sleep?

I freaking love sleep. Like to a T. I adore it.

I was that dork in college who was in bed by 10pm. For real.

My children, however, do not share this passion of mine. They loathe sleep. Hate it. Despise it.

It makes me want to cry. Or club baby seals. Or laugh at the melting glaciers, because then I feel a little better. I know. I'm sick. Twisted. But I'm okay with that. Whatever keeps me trekking, I say.

Three and half hours. That's how long J and I have been tag-teaming it. And yet both of my kids are still awake. Still on and off screaming. Still crying for whatever parent is not currently with them. Still hating the world of dreamland.

Whatever.

That's what kid's say, "Whatever." Because if they said "Fuck you" or "Fuck this" they'd probably get their mouths washed out with soap.

So I'm saying whatever. Whatever to sleep.

Because it hates me.

So I hate it.

Because that's the awesome 12-year-old mentality I have towards it right now.

Oh, and this is not due to children being jet-lagged. I wish I could blame it on that. That'd be awesome. Great. Fan-freaking-tastic. But I can't.

This is the norm.

I'm not advocating anyone sleep-train their bundle of sunshines. In fact, I'm pretty morally opposed to it. But I get it. I really do. I understand why people do that. They like their sleep. Like me.

Ah...sleep...

Whatever.

Sleep deprivation is real. And it may possibly kill me.

I always thought that people who complained about sleep deprivation with newborns were, well, pansies quite frankly. That they were being melodramatic.

Mostly because even Miss H, who is my “bad sleeper” (though apparently baby B is equivalent to most of the worlds “bad sleepers”) never slept more than 45  minutes at a time, but she did sleep. So even if it were in 45 minute increments, I still got sleep.

And then baby B was amazing. He did 2+ hour stretches from birth. Of course, Miss H still made sure to wake up in between him, so that I never got too used to sleep, but it was still sleep and it worked and I functioned.

But then baby B started getting teeth. Oh, the teeth!  For the first four or so days before his first tooth popped through he didn’t sleep. Like, at all. I literally had to be holding him while rocking or patting him, otherwise he was screaming bloody murder. It was awful. I was exhausted because the only sleep I was getting was when I’d just start drifting off due to exhaustion. But it was never more than 10-15 minutes because then baby B would start screaming because I had stopped moving him.

Pretty much when I thought I was at my breaking point, his first tooth popped through. Thank God! I thought. I surely couldn’t do it for one more day.

Of course, then I got really sad thinking of all the babies who are left to cry it out. Think of how many of them are in such real pain and just need their mommas to love and comfort them, but their parents are too selfish to show them that kind of compassion, even in such pain. It breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart just watching my baby be in pain. I couldn’t just walk away from him and let him deal with it on his own. Of course, then he started getting teeth all wham! Bam! And the sleep deprivation set in again.

And we’ve been working on tooth number five these past few days – it finally made its first cut-through appearance this morning. I seriously thought I was going to lose my mind last night. I didn’t even get to lie down until 2 am.

Of course, J, who has sat right next to me and told me how amazing I am on more than one all-nighter, was semi-asleep. And since I was nearing my breaking point I really wanted to punch him in his gonads. It didn’t matter that he offered to try soothing baby B (baby B doesn’t want him, so it just makes it worse). I was just mad that if he could sleep through the screaming, then he actually had the ability to sleep. And I didn’t. And it pissed me off.

So while I held my poor, teething baby, I fantasized about what it would be like to check into a hotel for a night and sleep for 6 solid hours. No, wait! I’d sleep for 12 hours! 12 solid hours of sleep. I cannot even think of what that is actually like. It’s one of those mythical things. Like unicorns or griffins or virgins after the age of 20. 12 hours of sleep just isn’t possible.

But I fantasized about it. And it was enough. I kept on rocking and patting and telling him how much I loved him. And when the sun finally came up and I climbed out of bed and drank a pot of coffee, I sincerely thanked God that his tooth has popped through and there should be better sleep for all us in the near future.

Otherwise…that hotel might not be in the too far-off distance of my future.