Crib-Be-Gone & Bedtime Magic (almost)

As a two-year-old who believes she's at least three-and-a-half, Elliot is anything but babyish. So we granted her biggest birthday wish yesterday and transferred her from the crib into a big girl bed.

Elle accepted this big move with far more grace and cooperation than we expected... last night.


When Maya made the big jump at almost exactly the same age, we weathered at least a month of evenings listening to her calmly but persistently bang on her bedroom door (unable to escape thanks to the baby-proofed door knob!) until she collapsed sleepily across her threshold, making it awfully difficult to sneak into her room and put her back into bed. Often, when we did manage to scoot Maya aside enough to open the door, we discovered extensive vandalism.


Attention fellow parents considering crib elimination: be sure to remove all petroleum-based diaper-related products from the room before sealing your child in there. Such messy items are sometimes confused with finger paint!

While I did catch Elliot in a few attempts to vandalize her sister, asleep in her own super-big-kid bed, it took no more than half an hour for Elliot to settle into her usual routine: flipping the pages of much-loved books until falling asleep on top of them.

Still, the switch isn't easy for her. She woke up in the middle of the night, scared and sobbing, and wanted to sleep with us for the first time in a year! She told me this morning the big kid bed was a little scary. She climbed in bed excitedly for her nap today, but she ended up calling for me every few minutes, always tearing up when I left the room again. After two hours of tucking her back in and cheerily leaving the room, we ended nap time with no nap.

It will take a bit of patience and a lot of over-played hyperbolic enthusiasm (example: "Wow, Elliot, where is the big, big girl that gets to sleep in this big, big bed... Oooh, it's you... you're such a big girl!".... at this point I feel like I'm playing the part of the guy in Blues Clues 90% of the day) to get her comfortable with sleep in a new spot, even when she's been after Maya's bed all summer.

It's strange how we never really grow out of that little kid tendency to be so excited for big changes and then weirdly overwhelmed by them when they happen!

I took this picture while opening the door. The room was dark other than the camera flash and a nightlight... so this is Elle stalking Maya. She had already managed to give Blondie's hair a tug a few minutes earlier. Clearly, she was heading back for more!

The Great Crib Escape

I've said it before and I'll say it again, almost-2 and just-past-4 are really wonderful ages to parent. The girls play well together most of the time, they aren't as wobbly as they once were but not quite as daring as they will be so mortal danger is not such a pervasive worry (slightly).

And they sleep.


Oh, I know, other parents have sleepers from day one... or month three... or whatever. I did not.

Maya still wakes up at some point each night to crawl in bed with us, though it doesn't even rouse us anymore. Elliot has slept uninterrupted since January, most nights anyway. Both are early risers, usually waking around 7, but they go to bed around 8 without much resistance, giving us entire evenings to enjoy ourselves.


Of course we know this easy-going stage can't last for long. Elliot is almost 2, and she's a big almost 2 (95% in height and 75% in weight, when we last checked). The big kid bed will be necessary pretty soon, and then all naptime and bedtime rituals veer precariously off kilter.

When we transitioned Maya, weeks of bedtimes were spent listening to her banging on the (locked... I'm a little sheepish to say) bedroom door. Or listening to the eery quiet in her bedroom and wondering what project she was working on. Once we found her covered, head to nearly ruined carpet, in Vaseline. Another time we couldn't get in the room to check on her, as she had fallen asleep right in front of the door, like a kitten.

For a time, we had lost our evenings again.

Ugh.

I was hoping to put it off until this fall, but earlier this week, we heard something we've been listening for since she started walking last July.

THUNK. Followed by a panicky wail.

She attempted a jail break, and it ended poorly. Not emergency room poorly; it was just a typical goose-egg-type fall.

Thankfully, the THUNK made an impression on her. Before tucking her in, I now reminder her, "Don't climb out or you'll get another owie." To which she responds, "I fall doooown. My owie stiwl hewts." (a.k.a. still hurts in Elle-ish).

We might be able to ride this wave of calm, patterned sleep for a while, but the Big Girl Bed looms before us. One more thunk, or the next family birthday, and we'll be there, where once again all bets are off... for a time.

My Pretties

I realize that four days before a big trip probably isn't the best time for a major transition, but while cleaning up the playroom on Saturday, I followed my instincts, moving Maya's bed back up to Elliot's room.


When Elliot was first born, they shared a room. At that point, it was no problem. We put Maya to bed as usual, and snuggled Elle into her crib after both girls fell asleep. Newborn schedules are so wonky anyway, it didn't seem strange to shuffle the baby around.

Soon Elle was old enough for a bedtime routine, but Maya simply couldn't fall asleep with Elliot fussing. We tried for a few weeks, but it never really worked. At that point, Maya moved downstairs into the playroom, where she has stayed, more or less, for months.

When I was organizing Mount. Toy, Maya caught me eying her little bed. I was coveting the space for more room to play, and thinking of Elliot's nearly empty room upstairs. I barely mentioned that we could move her bed upstairs, and Maya began tugging at her pillow.

"Let's move it now, Mama. That way I won't have to be alone all the time." She said this with such excitement, I had to follow through.


The first two nights have gone extremely smoothly. The best part is that bedtime doesn't require both Joe and I at once. We take turns running them through the bedtime routine, reading books, and tucking them in.

Saturday night, we actually made a date of listening to the girls giggle over the monitor I used to enjoy Billy Holiday or Sinatra with a glass of wine on a quiet evening in... now it's our girls' laughter.

Eventually, after a couple of trips into their room, they were both fast asleep.


Suddenly, we'll both have an extra hour of evening time, while the other of us puts the kids to bed. Plus, grandma might have an easier time putting them to sleep while we're in Vegas now that they have each other.

One and a half and three and a half are really, really good ages.

The Dreams of Sweeties

Long ago, when I had the luxury of being a glutton for sleep, I kept a dream journal.

When I first started the journal, I could only recall a few vague details. Overtime, I began to remember multiple dreams each night, in all their tumbling, nonsensical glory. Eventually, I was able to consciously change the course of dreams if I didn't like where they were going, and trust me, that was a nice skill to have.

Ina and the gang are loving the nice weather and extra attention.

After years of living on the sleep equivalent of the grapefruit diet, I barely have time to dream, and I've lost both the habit of journaling and the knack for remembering them. But I still love to share what I do remember as soon as I wake up.

Now, so does Maya.

Lately, she has been having strange dreams featuring cats, but we've heard others about adventures with zoo animals, trips to grandma's house, Joe and I shrinking, and chocolate during some of her early morning dream reports. It is an enjoyable window into her inner-workings.

Elliot, thankfully, is eating less sand than she did last fall.

Elliot got in on the dream act this morning too. She tried to wake up for the day at an entirely unacceptable 5:00 AM. With an expertise born of practice, I shushed her back to sleep (actually, I fell asleep holding her in the chair, and eventually she got bored and fell back to sleep too).

Her twitching woke me up. She looked a bit like a sleeping puppy, trying to run after something. She was clearly asleep, slack jawed and everything, but every few seconds her little mouth would grin and she'd say "Maya, Maya" and then giggle. Her happy, sisterly dream continued even as I tucked her back into her crib.

This is a rambling post, I know, but I've always found dreams so interesting, and to have a little peek into the dreams of my girls was a nice treat this morning!

It's impossible to get Maya out of the sandbox. She spent two hours this morning baking cookies and birthday cakes in the playhouse "oven".

Milestones

Everything really is different with your second child.

With Maya, we were hyper aware of every milestone.

First smile, rolling over, sitting up, solid food, pincher grasp, standing up, walking, running,... We watched for and celebrated each one, closely reading the Baby Center updates that told us exactly what an average child would be doing at each stage. And of course, ridiculously proud when she reached each milestone a bit early.

We celebrate Elliot's milestones, too of course, though we are in much less of a hurry to reach each one. And the Baby Center updates now go straight to my bulk mail folder, since I'm not much interested in the official time line or all of the ridiculous must-have products they peddle, like The Medicator. Sheesh!

And unlike Maya, Elliot has an entire set of alternative milestones that we are tracking!

For example, as she approached her first birthday, we waited expectantly for a fresh round of sleep disruptions. She had been sleeping really well for a long time, just as Maya had. Then suddenly she reached the "Life Is Much Too Exciting To Sleep" stage, and suddenly started waking up at around 5:30 AM, ditching her morning nap, and wanting desperately to play if anything happened to wake her in the middle of the night.

A friend of mine has a 1 year old that just reached that stage too, so it's not just us and our sleep defying offspring!

Today, as demonstrated in the picture above, Elle reached the long-awaited, "Here Is Your Coffee, Mom" stage. It's a really good thing that the coffee the French press is barely warm by the time I fill my cup. With Maya, this milestone wreaked havoc on our entirely impractical and no longer white carpet. It means that coffee cups must be stashed at shoulder level if they are to be kept safe.

And it means that in a matter of days or weeks we will reach the "Hey, I Can Climb on the Couch and Reach Anything, Anywhere!" stage. Her access to the kitchen chairs has already put everything on the table at risk. Once she figures out how to get up on the couch, nothing on the window ledge, our preferred storage space for the camera, the laptop, and beverages hot and cold, will be safe.

Like Maya, I'm sure Elliot will reach that one long before she can accept and obey the word "No." Oh she can say it back to us, but only as a game, "No, no no no no," she says, shaking her head somberly, then grinning like a fool.

No, no, no, no, no..... no more coffee for me for a while!

Updates & a Recipe

It's been a while since I've offered up a general update... I'll conclude with an awesome apple pancake recipe, so stick with me.

1. Sleep Training: Elliot is doing pretty well, falling asleep on her own after many visits and pats on the back from Joe and I. She's only nursing right away in the morning and right before bed, with a snack in the middle of the night more often than not. Progress... We want to get her over that nightly wake up.... but progress all the same.

2. Orchard: We had a fantastic weekend adventure at a local apple orchard. We went with friends, who took the best pictures! Check it out at Adventures of Erik, Shana, & Anya. It was a fabulous place for adventure, with hay rides, apple picking, really aggressive goats at the petting zoo, hiking trails, and a stack of hay bales to climb.... The girls loved it!

3. Chickens: We're still getting 4 or 5 eggs a day, but we're also researching whether to put a light in the coop to keep them laying through the winter. Joe has added insulation to the coop, and has rigged a system to heat them on the coldest of days. More on that later.

4. Preschool: Maya is still loving it, bringing home loads of art projects that I don't know quite what to do with it. We may start sending them to family in the mail... remember snail mail etiquette. If you get a letter from Maya, please, PLEASE send her one back. She checks the mail every day!

5. And, as promised, the recipe. The apple orchard has inspired an apple pie, apple cake, apple sauce, and our favorite so far, German Apple Pancake. It's easy to make and sooo tasty. Let me know if you try it!

Sleeep....

We're making progress! Elliot loves whole milk, chugging cups full at every meal. She has fallen asleep in her crib two bedtimes and two afternoon naps in a row!

A few people (mostly my neighbor) have laughed at me for not Ferberizing her... I just won't abandon her to cry it out. I'm trying to build trust with her, and I certainly wouldn't trust someone who went from snuggling me to sleep every night to suddenly disappearing after goodnight moon!

So we are doing the Baby Whisperer pick-up-put-down thing, never letting her cry for more than three minutes. And we've got Maya in there with her most of the time, which seems to both calm her down and inspire her.

When I left her at nap time, she was laying in her crib just like Maya over in the toddler bed. Both were reading books to themselves and babbling.

I must admit, working made the sleep thing a lot easier. Lynda, a child care expert for 30 years, taught Maya to fall asleep on her own during naptimes, making the bedtime transition really easy.

Now I'm on my own, and most of my at home friends also admit that nursing/rocking baby to sleep is so nice in the beginning, but so hard to move past.

Yea for Progress!

... My Pretties...

Point me toward a field of bewitched poppies, and I just might not be able to keep myself from cackling and sending in the flying monkeys.

I want a trick, a magic bullet to transform Elliot's bad sleeping habits for me.

I know I have created this monster. I have been away from her so rarely, and never for very long. I have nursed her to sleep or rocked her to sleep for almost every nap and bedtime. If I didn't rock her to sleep, Joe did.

Oh sure, I blogged a couple of months ago, vowing to sleep train her. But after a few days of letting her cry in short bursts and then comforting her, she learned to fall asleep quickly, during her bedtime snack. So I quit trying, because I had my evenings back.

Well, for two weeks now, Elliot has boycotted sleep in the evenings. Here she is two weeks shy of her 1 year birthday, she can't fall asleep on her own, and I'm ready to, um, dramatically reduce her non-kitchen snack times.

So yesterday, I brought my A game (Joe did too, of course). Eventually.... eventually, she fell asleep in her crib. I was nearby, and she was exhausted, but it's progress.

Maybe I'll fair better in round two!

Goodnight Noises Everywhere

Elliot has been learning so many remarkable things. The flagship of her recent milestones, of course, is her increasing courage to take a few steps on her own. Add to that her new ability to communicate, and you can safely assume that sleep is about the last thing she wants to do.

While she calls for mama and dada (usually dada!), she is more fond of the sound "ba." With varying inflections "ba" can appear to mean "give me that book" or "guys, I'm headed up the stairs... catch me!" or "more potatoes please."

Even more exciting are her hand gestures. I had all but dismissed the idea of teaching her sign language. I worked on it with Maya a bit, but all that stuck were the signs for "all done" and "more," both of which she mastered right around the time she could say the words. Elliot deserves a shot at learning some useful signs though, given that in the last 12 hours she has mastered raising her arms to mean "so big," shaking her head to mean "no," and waving her chubby little arm to mean "night-night."


But to be an effective signing student, she must get more than 8 hours of sleep a day (average is about 15). Lately she has been boycotting bed time until she absolutely passes out at 11:00.

With Maya, I read all of the various experts with their endlessly complex recipes for sleep. Letting her "cry it out" seems cruel and damaging for the sort of trust I'm trying to build with her, but rocking and nursing her from 8 until 11 turns me into a raging, kid-free-time-deprived nutcase.

So between Joe and I, we've cobbled together a method that might work for us. We're going to really stick to the bedtime rituals: bath, jammies, brush hair and teeth, read a couple of books including goodnight moon, give her a little snack, and put her gently into her crib. If she cries, let her go three minutes and then head back in to comfort her a bit. Back in the crib for three more minutes. Eventually she stops crying and starts playing, and then falls asleep. In theory, it takes a bit less time (fewer cycles of three minutes plus comfort) each night.

Hopefully this will teach Elliot to fall asleep on her own, deprive her of the one-on-one attention and play time that appears to be keeping her awake, and build her trust that though we may leave her alone in her room for a bit, we always come back shortly.

We're trying to achieve this with Maya in the room at the same time! Ultimately, we do want them to share a room (not ours!). It seems silly to go through the relative torture (seriously, no one is going to sleep or relax well for the next two weeks as she learns to fall asleep quietly) of setting up a routine that works, only to move them into the same room later and go through the craziness all over again.

Wish us luck. With Maya we waited until she was over 1 year to stop nursing her to sleep and start the real sleep training, but once it was done, I kicked myself for not doing it sooner. With all of Elliot's gusto for learning and interest in mimicking Maya, let's hope that the bedtime skills come quickly.

Memory Zen

I woke up cranky this morning! I was disgusted that after spending a good portion of the wee hours trying to teach herself to walk, Elliot woke up radiant and ready to play at 6 AM. Joe was at the center of my crankiness (although he accepted his half of the midnight duties with equal... um... zest and pride for our little over achiever), because it was his turn for the early shift and he was in some sort of coma.

I was mad at the nanny for not clocking in early...

I was really just tired... but, ooh, I was mad.

While Elliot cruised around her high chair, stopping periodically by the foot rest to grab the cheerios I stashed there, I slammed around the kitchen making coffee and contemplating the likelihood that I'll sleep more than 6 hours at a crack within this decade.

Just like Little Critter, I was so mad.

Without anyone to be mad at, I was subconsciously preparing to be crabby all day. I snapped at Maya when she wanted to select a different television show for her morning entertainment. I snapped at Joe when he assured me he'd get up early with her tomorrow. I think I even had a sarcastic comment for Elliot when she got tired of chasing the cheerios around her high chair and squawked to be free!

As I stormed about, I realized that Elliot, the little angel, only wakes up this early a couple times a week. Maya's routine was a 5:30 wake up call. All of those mornings, or most of them, I woke up with Maya regardless or how many times she had been up the night before. Yet as crabby as I was this morning, I only vaguely remember being upset now and then that I would never sleep again.

My memory of the sleep deprivation during Maya's babyhood, and of my own crabbiness about it, has almost completely faded. I very clearly remember watching the Morning Show, sipping coffee, and chasing Maya as she crawled gleefully to the stairs or the fireplace or the outlets as needed. I don't remember, but must have had, days of crabbiness at Joe, at the world in general... at Maya? over the unfairness of it all.

This morning, I decided that since most of us don't remember much about the mediocre crabby days, I wasn't going to have one. If I'm going to forget it anyway, I might as well get over it now.

(This doesn't ring true for all of the other little things about my daily life that I'll forget, like the joyful but horrifying tenor of Elliot's baby voice as she babbles at 3:30 in the morning - but it does hold real possibilities for so many other stupid things I stress over daily but won't remember by next week. I need to relax!)

My theory worked, or maybe it was the pot of coffee. Anyway, today will not be forgotten as a middling crabby day. It will be remembered (by two of us anyway) as the day Unk rode on the Teacup Ride and visited the zoo.


It will be remembered as a great day!

The Rhythm of Life

I intended to slim down my blog posts over the summer, as nap time becomes a gardening tool as essential as a good trowel or the hose (ha ha ha, I hear echoes of those well-meaning mothers reflecting on the fireman's long hose).

I didn't expect to post infrequently simply because nap time vanished.

The rhythm of our lives is a about as dependable as the prairie winds. For months we've enjoyed the gentle breeze of predictable nap times, first Elliot at 9am, then both girls at 12:30 or 1, and finally, bedtime at 8pm.

Occasional, disruptive gusts caused by a short-lived cold or a really exciting morning, may keep one of the girls from sleeping. This simply leads to a predictably crabby afternoon, at which point I channel my mother's frequent (and probably correct) observation of my siblings when they were young and cranky, saying "she's just tired" every few moments. An early bedtime generally gets us back on track.

Elliot caught some sort of nasty virus last week that threw our rhythm into a wonky carnival cadence... or, I suppose, a swirly summer storm wind (assuming I'm trying to stick to a metaphor, but that's in poor taste given that tornado season is upon us).

For more than a week, nap time is any time. Even as the girls seem to be getting healthier, I can no longer predict that two hours after breakfast Elliot will want her morning nap. Some days she is out in 30 minutes; others she waits until lunch! Maya has simply boycotted naps for a few days.

Oh, I realize this sounds like the rambling complaints of a woman who essentially has played in the dirt for the past week rather than dragging herself to a stuffy office place. But I NEED nap time.

No morning nap, means no time to catch up with friends or family while Maya artfully decorates the (useless) phone book with stickers and markers.

No afternoon nap means no time to wrap up a few inside chores, read something for myself, or update this little project. More importantly, no afternoon nap means that instead of 2 hours of quiet to do whatever I like, I end up with an afternoon running up and down stairs toting a 20 lb wiggler and steering a crabby kid back to her room "just until the big hand is on the 6.... then nap time can be all done."

Even this would be tolerable if the disruption this week hadn't escalated to hurricane force. Now they're protesting evening sleep.

That's not fair. Maya is doing great at bedtime. She snuggles in with all of her books (no stuffed animals for this one, she wants her collection of Beatrix Potter and The Very Hungry Caterpillar next to her on the pillow!) and falls asleep after a few hundred cries of "Mama, mama!" and (when we answer) "what's she saying on this page?"

No, Elliot has reached the age of real sleep trouble. Until now, she fell asleep as soon as she nursed in the evening. Sure she would wake up to eat or snuggle during the night, but since she just joined us, it wasn't a problem. Everyone kept sleeping.

Now she's too excitable. She knows she'll miss out on something. She keeps her eyes open as long as she can stand it! If she wakes up in the middle of the night, she tries to pretend she's not tired. She pulls herself up on her crib or my hips (I really have to slim down, if only to give her one less thing to pull up on!), and coos and giggles. I'm not sure if she's trying to convince herself or me that it's time to get up, but regardless, I have to wake up enough to calm her back down and shush her to sleep.

This means no quiet time in the evenings either. We spend way too long trying to put this baby down!

The unfortunate reality is that before I can recapture the gentle consistent sleep rhythms of this house, I have to teach my baby how to fall asleep on her own. This time around, I am under no illusions. Because I seriously reject the idea of letting her "cry it out," I'll spend the next few months establishing a consistent bed-time routine, letting her play in her crib by herself now and then, and putting her down just before she falls asleep... then picking her back up when she freaks out... then putting her back down when she's calm, but not asleep... over... and over...

First I have to find her a spot. She's too disruptive in the same room as Maya. We can't put Maya all the way downstairs by herself, not yet. The playroom is way too stimulating. I suppose her bed will end up next to ours. Let's hope that works.

And let's hope it doesn't take months... I'll check out The No Cry Sleep Solution again and The Baby Whisperer and see if I can get some quiet time back.

If you don't hear from me all that often, this is why! I will be posting pictures of the new garden fence tomorrow, and we expect to build a chicken coop next week! Wish us luck!

On Hanging in There

Maya is currently upstairs, tucked neatly into her toddler bed, dreaming about the new kitty she wants to give Anakin (our giant housecat) for his birthday.

This may seem mundane to you, but I’m out of breath from turning cartwheels in my basement.

While pregnant last summer, I began the tradition of napping with Maya daily. I was exhausted from the whole building-a-human-being thing, and we both love to snuggle. It just seemed like a great idea.

Then Elliot was born and the logistics have been all wrong ever since. At least once a week (usually more), they are not synchronized in their napping needs. Maya simply can’t fall asleep with a chattering (or crying) baby in the room with her, and Elliot just isn’t ready for a set schedule.

For a week and a half I have required Maya to nap in her own room. She piles her bed full of books and hangs out in there contentedly for the entire two hours of “nap time.” But she doesn’t sleep.

This means I have an overtired, crazy kid for the rest of the day. Potty training has suffered, table manners have suffered…. Elliot and I have suffered.

I was just about to give up. In fact, I told Joe last night that I’m just going to give in and lay down with her for naps (never-mind the fact that I covet the idea of a two-hour span of time with at least one, likely both girls sleeping!).

He told me to hang in there just a few more days.

And today she was asleep within half an hour. Woo hoo.

The transition away from diapers was the same story. We had one awful, really messy week. Then, just as we both about threw in the towel, she started cooperating. Don’t get me wrong. Potty training is ongoing. From here on out, though, she’s trying really hard and we’re down to one kid in diapers.

I actually don’t remember much about my pre-baby life (probably a self-defense mechanism to keep me from obsessing about weekends away, copious sleep, and happy hours), but I’m almost sure that all of those old clichés (darkest before dawn, battening down the hatches, tomorrow is another day…?) apply to life beyond kids as well.

Hooray for naptime. New York Times here I come!

Maya wanted to hold Elliot. She looks concerned doesn't she?

They play together so much now (well, they've started to interact, anyway)!

The Sweet Ambrosia of Sleep

Most new parents know that new babies are capable (medically-speaking) of sleeping through the night by 3 months of age. Most do not realize that the medical definition of “through the night” is five consecutive hours!

Few adults can function well on five hours of sleep… and I am certainly not among the few that can.

To make matters worse, just as your baby is developmentally ready to sleep longer stretches, outside forces begin to disrupt her sleep. I’m talking about throbbing, swollen gums (Elliot's already been teething for a month), sore thigh muscles and a low grade fever (vaccines), and the loud protests of her big sister as she fights off the Little Mermaid’s shark in her sleep.

At four months old Elliot was sleeping comfortably in her own bed from 8:30 at night to 6 or 7 in the morning. For a week and a half I gorged myself in an all-I-could-sleep buffet.


Then at 4 months, our baby needed more shots. Fie vaccines! I worried so much about the under-researched effect of the chemical cocktails they were injecting into my baby, that I hadn’t even anticipated the sleep deprivation. She hasn’t slept more than two hours in her own bed since the shots.

After her somersault off the bed last week, I certainly didn’t dare bring her into our bed while I was sleeping! Even though I’ve become a big fan of co-sleeping (oh yes the medical profession frowns on it, but the sisterhood of mothers across the globe recognizes co-sleeping as the most natural and sensible way to keep everyone rested and healthy), I’ve been up and down two or three times a night trying to teach Elliot to sleep in her bed. Between teething (she wakes every time her Tylenol wears off) and the bad habits her shots caused, no one was sleeping.

Then Joe installed the bed rail.

Now our bed IS the crib. Terrible, I know. I didn’t let Maya sleep in our bed until she was over a year old, and then it was just to coax her into sleeping longer in the morning. Elliot, however, seems sturdier to my less frightened, more seasoned mothering instincts. And I was totally shocked to find out that many of the moms I’ve confessed to admit to co-sleeping with their own babies.

When she’s a bit older I’ll buckle down and coach Elliot in the art of self-soothing. For now though, that snuggly baby body stretches out next to me, away from blankets and pillows of course, and we sleep. All of us.

I slept so much last night, I even remembered my dreams! Oh the luxury!

Fellow math-geek parents, check out Mothering Magazine’s statistical analysis demonstrating that co-sleeping is not any more dangerous than crib sleeping.

Of course, if you’re thinking of co-sleeping follow the safety guidelines (they’re at the end of this article).