Thursday, March 01, 2007

Musical Beds

I had been planning to write this post for a while now, but since today the New York Times featured an article exactly about this issue, I had to do it right away!! Here it is, my husband sent me the link this afternoon. Ha -- and did you know that if you click in the box that says "Share" on the right side of the article and then click on Permalink you get get a link for the blog that will still work even after it becomes part of the NYT archive? Good to know that!!

So, if you read the article, I wanted you to know that we could be one of the families featured in it (except for the detail that we don't live in New York, nor are we designers of maternity wear for department stores :) since our experience is very similar to these families'...

[Wow, it's raining really hard right now. I love to sleep with the sound of rain, it just makes snuggling under the covers so much cozier. Oh no... it stopped, I hope it starts again when I get into bed.]

I have already shared quite a bit of our sons' sleep history here (where I summarize both of my sons' sleep history and talk about night weaning my youngest and trying to get him to sleep through the night) and there (the post is titled "Goodbye Family Bed").

Since we moved the boys to their own room five months ago, we've been playing a lively game of musical beds several nights a week. Most often, my lovely husband is the one who gets up and goes to sleep with our oldest son in the futon who used to be in their bedroom, but sometimes the little one comes to sleep with me on our bed as well. Or, when they're sick, sometimes we trade places during the night.

The transition was pretty smooth for both of them and the youngest -- who has been sleeping in his crib since he was born, although for two years the crib was by my side of the bed -- generally spends the whole night in his crib (he can get out easily because we have one of those bed rails and there's a gap at the end). He sometimes needs to drink some water, or a kiss to settle back down, but he doesn't fuss much and gets up and out of bed. Ironically, sometimes when he is sick he sleeps better than when he is well, which is unbelievable!

Our oldest though... he's the one who has been giving us the most trouble. He can never go to sleep without an adult close to him. Then, if he wakes up in the middle of the night, he comes directly to our bed and one of us has to go with him to his room and stay there with him until he falls asleep. Generally that doesn't really work, he feels he needs to sleep with someone. Since in the past five months there was a futon bed in their bedroom, my husband spent many nights there with him. But tomorrow it'll be a week since we moved the boys to the small room that used to be our study and my parents arrived and are sleeping in the futon, so there's nowhere to go with him. Since we have a full bed, him sleeping with us is not really an option... so we really need to convince him to sleep in his own bed.

He's been complaining of bad dreams and he is afraid of the dark, unlike Alice's daughter, whose bad dreams started after Halloween, I don't know exactly when this started because he learned about monsters playing with friends and he may have been scared by a DVD that he watched, but I'm not sure. I guess some children are just "naturally" afraid of the dark, and others are not.

I will never forget one night when my brother and I were children. I think he must have been 7 and I 9. He was extremely afraid of the dark, he didn't even want to walk down the darkened hall to his bedroom. My mom then asked me to first walk down the hall and then to go outside. I remember the wind blowing and some lights from the house giving a faint light so I could see the trees. I grabbed some leaves from a tree so I could show him that I had really been out there and then I came back inside. It didn't really help him, but it became an indelible memory for me.

I don't know what we'll do to help my son and to have restful nights. My husband loves sleeping with him, but sometimes he's just too tired of playing musical beds. And I miss him by my side as well.

Now I'm going to bed, let's hope that the little one doesn't wake up too soon and maybe stays in his bed all night. Oh, and it's not raining heavily anymore :(

5 comments:

Alice said...

I hope you get to have some good night's sleep. What helped with us (a bit) is putting both kids into the same room but I think you're already doing this, right? I. is sleeping now on a mattress next to N's crib and she hasn't had any nightmares the last three nights. So she obviously takes comfort in his presence.

Juliet said...

I love sleeping when it rains, too. It does make it so cozy!

I hope you can get some decent sleep soon. I guess every kid is different when it comes to sleeping by themselves and being in the dark. William actually loves being in his room alone. I hear him laugh just before he falls asleep, and he doesn't like ti even nap with us. This sometimes makes me sad, but is usually okay.

Aliki2006 said...

I can't remember if you've tried this, but it took us awhile to get Liam to sleep on his own, too. We bought an inflatable mattress from Target and made a "nest" for him on the floor next to our bed. He got to keep a flashlight there and some familiar soft toys and things. The rules were: he had to start out the night in his room (but one of us had to lie with him until he was asleep) but then if he woke up at night (which he always did) he was to come in quietly and lie down in his "nest" on the floor next to our bed. After a few months of this we replaced the regular twin mattress on his bed in his room with the air mattress and that did the trick! Maybe subconsciously he felt like he was still on the floor in our room, but he started sleeping through the night (at 4 years old) in his own room.

Liam still has nightmares and night terrors, though--that hasn't changed!

kate said...

Hmm, our kids do well at night (usually) but tend to wake up early and then want to get in bed with us. If it's really early (like 5am, which is not uncommon) they don't get to stay because once they're there, no actual sleeping gets done by anyone. But if it's later (like 6:30 or after) we let them snuggle and just resign ourselves to the fact that it will be an early morning (not so much fun on the weekend...)

Andromeda Jazmon said...

My kids wake me up a lot too. They didn't used to when they were infants. Buddy comes into my bed almost every night around 3 am because he wakes up scared. Punkin wakes up when he is sick or teething but he goes back to sleep in his own bed. When we are all sick it is really hard. Last night I was up 4 or 5 times between the two of them. Sigh. When I get 7 hours uninterrupted I am so happy!