Our Own Rules

I wanted to share this article from Offbeatmama.com because it's pretty much how our parenting style is. I'm not one of those mom's that has her kid on strict schedule. Eat at this certain time; play at this certain time; sleep at this certain time. We kind of let Coen tell us what he's ready for, if he's sleepy...obviously it's time for bed. If he's hungry...obviously it's time to eat.  I have relaxed rules. I have Coen in bed between 8-9. He usually wakes up around midnight to eat and will end up in the bed with us. Sometimes I put him back in the crib and sometimes I don't. I know around what time he gets hungry and when he just wants to put crap in his mouth. I can't live around that type of scheduling let alone schedule every waking moment of my kid's life. He's a kid. Let him be a kid.  When he's at an age that he is forced to adhere to being controlled by a clock, we will handle it. Right now...we're just playing it by ear. It is more relaxing...for everybody.

Last night, my four-and-a-half-month-old daughter slept in her crib for the first time. This was huge — not because co-sleeping isn't working for us, and not because I even think that it's so important that she can sleep in her crib. This was huge because it reminded me how making decisions as a parent works for me.

We've been co-sleeping since our daughter was born, and it has worked beautifully for us. On her own terms (touching me, preferably with a boob in her mouth), Nitsah is a wonderful sleeper — even adjusting with ease to a seven-hour time difference when I visited my family in the US when she was two months old. Not on her own terms — well, we got a taste of that each time we took Nitsah in the car and she was not within reach of my boob (and sometimes not even within reach of me). As my niece eloquently put it, "She's roaring."

At the same time, we always knew that we didn't want to co-sleep forever — at least in theory. In practice, I kept putting off deadlines to try out The Crib. We'd wait until after my trip to America; after all, we'd have to cosleep there. We'd wait until she was four months old. Until six months. Maybe longer. Secretly, I began to feel terror at the prospect. I didn't want bedtime to be like a car trip — I didn't want to watch her scream, staring at me with quivering disbelief that I wouldn't just give her a boob and unbuckle her already. Even when she fell asleep in the carseat, she would wake up the moment the car stopped. In bed, too, she would usually wake up seconds after I moved away from her.

Doing research online wasn't comforting. Everything I read started with the suggestion to put the baby in her crib for naps. Nitsah was happy to play in her crib during the day, pushing herself off the rungs like monkey bars, but sleeping there? ALONE? No way.

Co-sleeping began to feel not like a beautiful choice but like something I did because I had no other choice. It also seemed to shunt me into a parenting orthodoxy — even though nothing I read sounded exactly right for us long term, when it came to sleep it seemed like I had to be 100% attachment parenting or 100% cry-it-out, with no middle ground (unless I had a baby who would simply go to sleep when set down in a crib, which I certainly did not), and with both camps persuaded I would maim my child if I did anything other than what they proscribed.

Then, as I was getting ready for bed, I put Nitsah down in the crib and was about to go brush my teeth when I looked down at her. She was rolling around, smiling happily at her beer coaster mobile and then at me. Not one bit sleepy, but not one bit desperate or unhappy, either. I reached a sudden decision. We were having a sleepover. Here, in her nursery, where she had never slept for even a minute. Without a system, without a plan beyond this one night, without a parenting guide to tell me whether to let her cry or pick her up.

So I nursed her to sleep as we rocked in the rocking chair (also almost unused), telling her a long story. At 11 PM, when she was soundly asleep, I carefully put her down in the crib… and she stayed asleep! I stepped back, stunned this had been so easy. At 11:07 she woke up crying. I settled down on the daybed with the good book I've been trying to read for the past month, and nursed her back to sleep. I tried put her back in the crib, but she started crying instantly. I picked her back up. No rules.

Then she slept — for three whole hours. I know because I watched them all… apparently, I'm the one who can't fall asleep without nursing.

The rest of the night passed smoothly. When she started to get restless, I rested my free hand on her head, and she would relax again. I read several chapters in Middlesex, by Jeffery Eugenides, with What to Expect Your Baby's First Year and The Baby Book by Dr. Sears safely lodged away in the office bookshelf. When Nitsah eventually woke up and wanted to nurse, I took her out of the crib and nursed her. When I put her back in, warm and content, she didn't even wake up. That time, I even slept a bit. About two hours later she woke up again, and this time I took her into bed with me, and that was fine, too.

I don't know if Nitsah will sleep in her crib regularly from now on. I don't even know if I'll put her to sleep in it tonight. I don't know when she will sleep through the night, and I don't care, so long as we are both well-rested and happy. What I know now, though, is that we can navigate our sleep choices the way we've navigated everything else as parents. We can experiment. We can be inconsistent at times as we figure out what we want to be consistent about. I can go with my gut, but that doesn't mean that I should let fear control me. The crib is now an option, not an ultimatum.