Making room for baby
I just spent the last hour or so rearranging our bedroom.
When we first came home with Ian, I tried sleeping in the bed. Since he was nursing 347 times a night and I still had fresh stitches in my crotch, sitting up and lying down was getting to be a bit of a drag. So after a day or two of that we switched and I slept in my recliner downstairs (LOVE that recliner! Best pregnancy purchase ever!) and Rich slept on the sofa in the living room with me. That way I could lean back to nearly flat to sleep with Ian and then just sit up in the chair to feed him. If I fell asleep he couldn’t fall out of the chair or off of me so it was comforting.
But after a few days, I started to miss my husband way over on the other side of the living room. And Ian was getting more of a solid schedule of only needing to nurse every two to three hours versus constantly through the night so I had a better chance of getting solid sleep. So we decided to head back to the bedroom as a family.
The only problem was where to put the baby. I wanted him in the bed with us, preferably in contact with me. I’ve found that holding him or touching him or being very close to him does great things for fending off any hormonal depression I may have. But Rich was concerned that one of us would smoosh him in our sleep. So while the baby and I were getting better sleep, poor Rich wasn’t getting hardly any because he was convinced every noise he heard was the baby suffocating.
So for now, we’re going to experiment with my modified bassinet. I raised the mattress up on the Arm’s Reach co-sleeper to be nearly bed height and I’ve given up my nightstand. We’ll try this out tonight and see how it goes. I’d still prefer him on me but we get plenty of snuggle time during nursing and I’d like Rich to be able to sleep as well. Wish us luck tonight!
That bed sounds like a great compromise. When Charlie was born, we had a cradle that we put near the foot of the bed on my side. If he started to fuss, all I had to do was reach out and start rocking it.
Hope you all three get a good nights sleep tonight!
Hearing about this stuff always makes me want to take some anthropology classes. What did our ancient forbears do? Did they just roll over and suffocate their kids all the time??
Genie Reply:
November 4th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Really I think babies all over the world sleep with their parents it’s just we Americans who worry about SIDS etc.
I have heard of those co-sleepers and htink they are woderful inventions; the best for everyone. I always put Owen in his own bed at bedtime, but when he woke up and night, whenever that was, I would bring him to bed with me and he would just stay there, nursing in his/my sleep. However, I had the bed to myself, as Steve did not live with us then, which made it easier. Now that owen is 3.5, well, he STILL creeps into bed with us in the middle of hte night, though obviously not to nurse. And it is hard for all three of us to sleep well; we need a bigger bed!
Genie Reply:
November 4th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
My friend from college made a giant family bed where they attached a double bed to their queen. I’m not ready for that kind of commitment and furniture rearranging yet.
This is exactly the solution we used with Tink. I didn’t actually have a room for her when she was born. She bunked in our room until she was almost a year old. Eventually, she was in her crib in our room, but at first, she was set up right next to my bed where a nightstand would be. It worked really well because parents could actually sleep without worry of baby squishing and it was still super-easy for me to pick her up and nurse her during the night.
After our daughter was born she slept in our bed for the first year or so while she was nursing. In the beginning I was also so terrified of rolling over onto the baby that I actually slept crosswise at the far end of the bed for months.
Yes, I became the family dog!