Anyone Else Think This is Terrible?

I was flipping through my Parents' Magazine today. By the way I have no idea how I get it or why. I've never paid for a subscription and I pretty much never agree with much of the content. But every time that it comes in the mail I still flip through it for some reason. Well today in a section about children's sleep I read a snippet about what parents can do if their four year old wants to come in their bed with them during the night. A sleep expert from some hospital (I already threw magazine away or else I'd be more specific) suggested cold turkey as an option, stating that parents could simply lock their bedroom door after putting their little one to bed and let their little one adjust that way. I was horrified when I read this!

Am I being overly sensitive here? I mean, I know many people who do not make the choices we do. Many people are not comfortable co-sleeping with their three year old as we are and prefer for their children to be in their own beds/rooms. But I can't imagine any of them doing this with such little sensitivity. If I locked my bedroom door after putting Boo in bed in a separate room the poor child would cry hysterically at the door and probably fall asleep crying on the floor in front of our door. That breaks my heart. I don't think any child should have to experience that. There are better ways. Granted, other methods are probably not as quick and take more time and effort on the part of the parent, but they're much more respectful of children's feelings. I just don't understand why anyone would think it necessary to let a child be so upset in order to get them in their own bed! This advice fails to respect the fact that this child is a human being. Not to mention, four is an age where fear of the dark is very common. Many children would not only be sad about not being with mom and dad, but would be terrified if left in this position.

I'm so sad that Mothering magazine discontinued their print editions. It was nice to get a parenting magazine in the mail that didn't have such inconsiderate parenting advice.

I'm sorry if I sound self-righteous and judgemental. I try really hard to talk about things that I'm in support of versus things that I'm against so that I can steer clear of being a judgemental jerk on my blog, but this advice really really got to me.

Preparing Boo for the Home Birth of his Sibling

Our current plan is for Boo to be present at the birth of his sibling. I found some great information here and thought I would pass it along.

Preparing an Older Sibling for a New Birth

Boo has always been high needs in terms of attention and emotions. He's a very sensitive little soul. So it has been with much consideration that we've decided that the right choice for him is to be at the birth. While I do think he might struggle with seeing mom in pain, I also think that he may feel incredibly left out if he leaves the house and there's all of a sudden a baby when he comes back home. Given his personality, it seems that he might adjust better to being a big sibling if he's a part of his sibling's birth day. We will continue to prep him and discuss birth with him and are of course open to a plan B if he should indicate in one way or another that being at the birth is not best for him.

Sometimes I've wondered if/how he's processing all of this birthing education. Being 3 1/2 and an active little boy he's not exactly prone to long drawn out conversations about his feelings on the matter. The other day we ran into someone that I hadn't seen in a long time at Target and upon being questioned about the fact that he was in fact going to be a big brother, Boo began to tell this person how when baby's big enough, baby will come out of mommy's door. Well, I guess he HAS been listening and comprehending in his own way!

We've been working on creating a bedroom for Boo. I had a frank conversation with T the other night about transitioning Boo to his bedroom and was so relieved to find that we are on the same page. That is, that the bedroom is there and Boo can choose to sleep in it and he can choose to continue to cosleep. The only change is that Boo has his spot on the edge of the bed and he will likely have to give up his spot on the end move to the middle. Little one's cosleeper will be attached to the edge of the bed and I definitely feel that given how Boo rotates and moves in his sleep I'll need to be between him and his baby! Hopefully he will manage that small change okay. Right now he throws a righteous fit if we ask him to sleep in the middle. I'm hoping that he might understand more with a baby there. This could backfire, so I guess we'll just have to play it by ear! I guess maybe the key for us will be to be flexible and creative in the way that we help Boo adjust.

I'm open to any suggestions of those who've been through this process before!

Story of a co-sleeping family

I'm not sure that I've posted on co-sleeping as of yet, and since it's a pretty big deal as far as attachment parenting goes, I thought I'd attempt a post on this topic.

We started out when Boo was a newborn co-sleeping. At that point he was in a co-sleeper that was attached to our full-size bed. Our co-sleeper looks similar to this:

Co-sleeper pic

When Boo was younger he was pretty content to be in his co-sleeper. I would curl up next to the co-sleeper and he would curl towards me. He liked to sleep curled right to the inner edge. I would take him out when he needed nursed during the night and swaddle him and lay him back down when we were done. I had to sit up to nurse him because we couldn't seem to figure out side nursing at all! As Boo grew he decided that the co-sleeper wasn't close enough. He'd start out the night in the cosleeper and was usually okay with that. However, once he was out for that first nighttime feeding he preferred to stay in bed with mommy. So I'd hold him while we slept.

As he grew he started to move more and sit up and crawl and all of those wonderful things. Then it was time to put the co-sleeper away. :( At that point in time Boo would usually fall asleep on my lap for the night while I was downstairs watching a movie or tv program with the hubby. So we'd take him to his crib in his room and let him start the night there while we got to have some time to ourselves. This didn't work every night, but some nights it did. Once he woke up and let us know that he was hungry, unhappy, etc... he would come into our bed for the remainder of the night. At some point after putting the co-sleeper away we learned how to side nurse. Yay - oh happy day. What a difference it made!

When Boo was 7 months old, I went to work full time during the day. That was a very hard time. I did not enjoy being away from Boo at all and the money that I was making (not much) was hardly worth it. I was so happy to have my nighttime to reconnect with him. There were fewer nights that he started out in the crib as a result. As a working mom co-sleeping really helped me to get plenty of sleep. Even though Boo was waking to nurse, I didn't feel tired from this. Boo's food supply was lying right next to him so neither one of us had to fully wake for him to nurse. Once he was done he'd turn over and drift right back to sleep and so would I.

I quit working full time when Boo was 13 months old. I decided I'd had enough and wanted to open a home daycare so that I could be home with Boo, but still bring home some necessary income. As Boo got older we continued with the starting the night in the crib thing, with him spending a good part of the night in our bed. Except for now. I decided to clean out our bedroom and my way of doing this was moving everything into Boo's bedroom so that it could get organized before coming into this room. Problem is I ran out of money for this project (see part where I quit working above) and I still need tons of containers, shelves, etc... to make this work. So now we can't really get to Boo's crib because his room is so full of unnecessary crap. So, for the time being, Boo gets the whole night in bed with us. I must admit that I look forward to having that little bit of time at the beginning of the night where I get to stretch out in bed. It does get pretty cramped in a full size bed with three people! BUT, I do feel like it has been the best choice for us and we're happy with it despite some of the challenges.

Here's some articles that I found online. At some point I'll try to move some of these to my permanent links on the right side of this blog.

Ten Reasons to Sleep Next to Your Child

Cosleeping

Mothering's List of Articles

Enjoy!