A few weeks ago I wrote about my son’s night terrors and mentioned it’s not the only sleep issue we’ve got going on. (The past couple weeks have been okay on that front, by the way.) Since early January, Preschool Boy has been crawling into bed with my husband and me. Every. Single. Night.
I don’t even remember the first night it happened or what was different about that night, but I do know that the habit started while my husband was out of town. I just recall that one night I heard my little dude run down the hall and was barely awake as he stood next to the bed and asked if he could cuddle with me. Clearly at this point I had two options: 1) get out of my warm bed, walk him back to his and tell him to go to sleep or 2) pick him up, cuddle his sweet little self and go back to sleep. I don’t think I have to tell you what I did.
He’s returned to my bedside every night since.
I have to admit that the nights when my husband is out of town I actually kind of look forward to waking to the sound of my son running down the hall to my room. (And his does run – who has that kind of energy at 3 am?) But, I know it’s a habit that we need to break. At some point.
One of these days I’ll get out my trusty and worn copy of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
Do you (or did you) have a little bed invader in your home? What do you think about a child going to sleep in his own bed but spending part of the night with parents? If you had to break the habit, how did you do it?
Andrea Kruse
March 11, 2010We have co-slept from birth (with the help of a side attached co-sleeper then letting the kids into the bed when we felt it was safe enough. My son transitioned easily to his bed at 2, but we still allow him to join us in the morning, weekends or after bad dreams. Lately it has been most nights and I think it might be a new phase we are in.
I wish you well. I know it is a personal decision regarding sleeping arrangements and everyone does things differently for their own sleep health.
We co-slept with both kids until they were sleeping through the night, and I loved it.
I think it’s just a phase and at this point it’s not too problematic. Everyone falls back to sleep pretty quickly. But, I know that I don’t want him in our bed forever, you know, so at some point we’ll have to stop. I just hope it’s not too difficult.
Jana
March 12, 2010Both our kids slept in our room as infants (in a bassinett) and then moved to their crib in their own room. Everthing was going well with my older daughter until she was about 4. She started crying in the middle of the night EVERY NIGHT. We were worried about her waking up the baby so one of us would get up, talk to her, and eventually she would go back to sleep. Our pediatrician was the one who suggested that we tell her that if she needed something then she would have to come to us. So for a while she came down to our room every night and climbed into bed with us. After a while we changed it so that she had to ask what time it was before she climbed in and if it was more than 2 hours before wake up time, she had to go back to her bed. It was so hard to send her back to bed, but we really felt like we needed to set some boundary. Eventually she stopped coming down at all. Overall, I would say it was a 2-3 months that she slept with us and she stopped coming down a few weeks after we set the time limit. We tried not to make too big of a deal out of it because we knew that eventually she wouldn’t want to sleep with us!
You’re right – we loved snuggling with her and appreciated the oppotunity to do so without her baby sister. But I just can’t sleep as well with her feet in my back
What is it about kids sleeping sideways in the bed!?! My theory is that it’s their way of touching both parents. Which is lovely unless you’re the one with the foot end of the deal. But, my son has literally tried to sleep sideways in our bed since the co-sleeping days.
Jana
March 12, 2010I forgot to mention, but as a reward for sleeping in her own bed for a few weeks, we had a “slumber party” one night. When we were ready to go to bed, we got Ellie out of her bed and let her sleep with us for the rest of the night. We’ve also talked about setting up a once a month slumber party where she will sleep on the floor of our room on a bed of blankets. She LOVES that idea!
I love the slumber party idea! That’s so cute, and a fun special treat.
April
March 13, 2010I can’t say I have any advice, but I totally understand wanting to cuddle with your little one while they actually want to. I’m imagining the teen years when Kiefer’s not going to even want to talk to me.
Kiefer’s always been a good sleeper. We co-slept with him for the first three months and then transitioned him to his crib. Since we moved him into a toddler bed a couple of months ago, we have a gate in his doorway so he can’t run into our room and poke us in the face in the morning. He knows he can’t get up or call of us until it is light out so you can imagine how happy I am for daylight saving time to start this weekend. Anyway, for the past week or two when he does wake up, we put him in our bed for a few minutes to cuddle. It’s really nice. I wonder if it will turn into anything else…