Saturday, September 29, 2007

I have a parenting confession

We cosleep. For those of you that haven't read 4,382 parenting books, that means we let our 6 month old sleep in bed with us. For most doctors, its a BIG no no. Some people swear by it. When I was pregnant, I swore I wouldn't do it. But here I am, letting my kid sleep in bed with me. Want to know the worst part? We started doing it out of desperation. Thats right, we were DESPERATE. Those of you ready to start lecturing me about making parenting decisions out of desperation, let me just say this: you clearly don't have kids. If you do, and you've never desperately parented your child, let me commend you. Surely, you are in the minority.


It started when we moved. Suddenly, my champion sleeper, the perfect baby that slept through the night at 7 weeks, stopped sleeping through the night. After about 5 nights of this we were seriously sleep deprived. So, at 2 am, we plopped her into bed with us and VOILA, asleep in 3 seconds. It must have been a record. We all woke up the next morning refreshed. It must have been a one night thing, right? RIGHT?

Wrong. We clearly underestimated Annelise's ability to manipulate us. For the last month, she has been sleeping in our bed about 5 nights a week. She usually starts out in her crib, and then ends up in our bed. Who's in charge now?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does it say anything in those books about how to get her back to sleeping in her crib? I hope so, for you and hubby's sake.

Anonymous said...

PS. I have no doubt that I will desperately parent at some point.

Jess P said...

It gives several suggestions. The only thing that works for us is letting her cry for a little bit. Its not a hysterical "i need something now" cry, more of a whine. If we go in there, and she sees us, its all downhill from there.

sierra said...

My parents slept with me in their bed when I was a baby. My mom swears it helped our "bond".

Anonymous said...

I'm laughing (WITH you of course) so hard right now. We went through the same drama. There were a bunch of times we caved out of pure desperation. And, of course, because I laughed when I read this, Avery decided to become hysterical last night. And guess where she slept? Yep...

Jess P said...

Sierra, I don't think we'd mind so much if we had a bigger bed. For pretty small person. AK takes up A LOT of room. When she sleeps in our bed, she's the only one sleeping. Troy and I are getting kicked, scratched, punched..etc.