knitting up the raveled sleeve etc.

[mamajoan]

So tonight we will be effecting major change in the kids' bedroom. We have a duplicate of Isaac's bed, which has been living at our summer cottage, but my mom brought it back and I'm going to put it in that room and get rid of the crib. I don't know whether Ruthie will do better in the toddler bed than the crib, but I'm hoping she will -- the whole "want to do/have whatever Isaac is doing/having" thing. And it will certainly make the room feel less crowded, since the crib is enormous and the bed is, well, not.

Of course, this leaves open the question of what the HELL I'm going to do with the crib. For whatever reason I can't bring myself to just put it up on freecycle, and no one I know in the area who is pregnant wants it. I have a call in to a local battered-women's shelter to see if they might have a use for it. Meanwhile, I guess I'm going to have to stick it in the basement because mom is coming over tonight with the new bed so it has to go somewhere.

And mom is going to take Isaac to her house to sleep over tonight. I think he will be ecstatic. He loves her more than me. ;) Okay, that's not really true, but it's hard not to have one's feelings hurt when one arrives to pick up one's firstborn child from preschool and he bursts into tears because he was expecting grandma! (to be fair, grandma usually/often picks him up on Mondays and I failed to adequately prepare him yesterday for the fact that she would not be doing so. but still!) Whatever, the bottom line is he'll have a night with grandma and Ruthie and I will have a night to ourselves, for whatever that's worth.

To wit, the whole Ruthie-in-crib thing has not been working, so I'm hoping that shaking things up a bit with the toddler bed might help. I honestly don't know what the hell to do but something has to give. Isaac has been exhausted lately and I think it's (at least partly) because he keeps waking up when I go into his room to put Ruthie in the crib, or when she cries, and so forth. There were a couple of nights when it took several tries to get her down in the crib -- one such night with me and one with the babysitter -- so I think it was hard for Isaac to sleep through all that and as a result, he's overtired. The babysitter said that last night he asked to go to bed at 7pm!!! yikes! And if I think HE is tired due to the disruptions, what does that make me? Very nearly dead from the fatigue, that's what.

A couple of days ago when it started to become clear that the crib wasn't working out, I thought maybe I would just go back to cosleeping with Ruthie and try to night-wean her so that we can cosleep but not nurse. But now I'm thinking that isn't going to be possible either. It's not just that she wants to stay latched on literally all night long (which she did last night and it was horrendous), it's that she has suddenly become so wiggly and restless! She flops around constantly (yes, while latched on!) and it's totally impossible for me to sleep. Or her, for that matter!

That wiggly/thrashing stuff is exactly what Isaac started doing around this age (a few months earlier actually) and what pushed me to try him in the crib. Except, with Isaac he took to the crib immediately and was sleeping through the night without nursing from the first night I tried him in it. Ruthie, not so much. So I'm not sure what to do, but I know that something has to give because neither of us is getting any appreciable sleep and it's killing us. Ugh! So I have to hope that the toddler bed will help....

Wish us luck!

Comments

love & empathy

[lightningrose.livejournal.com]

baby sleep is hard! I know I'd do just about anything short of waving a dead chicken over the crib to ensure sleep -- and I might consider it depending on how little sleep I've gotten.

I think you are very smart to be using your mom to help Isaac get some sleep; it's rough on everyone!

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

*whispering in your ear*

Ferber.... Ferber..... Ferber..... :-)

(But with a 15-min limit)

[jrosehale.livejournal.com]

I'm just now reading a book called The No-Cry Sleep Solution. This is all preparatory reading, since the baby isn't due until January, but it specifically addresses how to get kids to sleep successfully through pretty much every age. It was recc'd by a friend who found it *very* helpful.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

The No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers is great. I have a copy I can lend you if you like.