My goal was to have our baby in my son’s room at 5 months. Well a year came and that still wasn’t happening.
It was wearing on us having the baby in our room. I desperately wanted to give her the gift of sleep and to have some sleep back in my life as well. She always wanted to be in bed with us and would wake up whenever we came in the room. I hesitated so long moving her in with her brother because he is and always has been an awesome sleeper and she was not. After talking over some ideas with our doctor on the best way to do it for both of them, we decided to go for it.
I really didn’t want my son to feel like his space was being taken over, so we talked to him about it and had him help arrange the room when we brought the crib. We also picked up some paper mache letters and some paint for a little activity and new room decor that I thought would help him get excited for the new set up. When we make art together, I tend to want to help him make things perfect but I’m pushing myself to just go with the flow and let him find his own creativity. I encouraged him to do that on this project as well. We picked up letters for his initial and his sister plus an ampersand. He did a great job painting them, especially for a 2 year old. He loved the painting process. He gets so focused and into it, it’s great to watch that concentration.
After they dried, we put on some hanging puddy and hung the letters in his room. They were a great addition to some of the other posters and things he picked out previously to make his room special. I also took a picture we snapped when visiting home depot and awing over the firetruck parked outside and the firefighters came out and talked to us. They quickly scooped Reece up and put him in the truck. It was the coolest thing and such a fun picture. I blew it up and found a red frame on clearance and it is perfect. I also made a little sign for him and tell him every night that he is pretty much my most favorite ever. We have fun reciting that and talking about the fire truck picture.
I think the things we did to get him excited and ready to share his space, really helped. We have always had a strong bed time routine and we just started changing the end a little to incorporate the baby staying in the room. I still need to get things decorated better for her but she is still so little that I don’t think she will notice and I have been wanting to go slow so it’s not massive take over.
The transition to getting her to sleep in his room was a little hard. But that’s a lot of her not sleeping through the night before anyway. When my husband was out of town, I gave the doctor’s recommendations a try. When they both started crying, I went in and sang a song and told them it was okay but it was bedtime and they needed to sleep. I made it a point not to pick them up but to sooth them for a moment and then left the room. I set a timer for 5 minutes and if they were still crying, I went back in and repeated the process, each time extending the amount of time in-between. Surprisingly, I only had to go in twice (5 and then 10 minutes) and then they were out. I planned for this long drawn out evening, followed by at least a week of the same types of nights but nope, my kids surprised me and just went with it.
My life has been forever changed since then. It’s been well over a month and I am a different person and different mom with this rest. We even spent a week at my in-laws and they shared a room there and they slept through cousins playing, movies, lots of laughter, etc. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am about this. I had been dreading this for so long and tried so many things to get this baby of mine to sleep outside of our bed! Hallelujha!
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