We’ve reached a big milestone in our house. Sebastian is sleeping [mostly] through the night in his own bed in his own room!
I was one of those moms who decided that co-sleeping (and more specifically, bed sharing) was best for me and my family. No judgment, please. I slept better during those first months knowing that my baby was right next to me, and when he was hungry, all I had to do was learn over to nurse. This meant I wasn’t awake for as long during the night so I got more sleep than if I had to actually get up. But don’t worry, I’m a smart person; I did all of the research and took all of the necessary precautions to keep him safe, like always lying him on his back, never going to bed under any influence of drugs or alcohol, and never putting him under the blankets. It worked for us. And he is healthy and thriving today.
Soon after we stopped nursing at 18 months, it became clear that it was time to move my little man to his own sleep space. He was taking up a lot of room in the bed – seriously, he was sleeping sideways/perpendicular to us! – and none of us was getting much sleep with all the tossing and turning we were doing. Nick had the idea of building our own toddler bed to go in our room, but then the great flooding disaster of 2019 happened, which redirected all of our time, energy, and focus to repairing the floors. So we bought a toddler bed instead.
Who is this big boy?! 🙂
I wanted to ease into the transition slowly so that Sebastian wouldn’t feel scared or traumatized, but luckily, he loved it! We started out keeping his bed in our room and Sebastian would run to it and read his books on it, as you can see in the photo above. We would put him down in his bed at night, but somewhere around midnight he would make his way back to our bed. Of course, our bed was just two steps away and he was used to sleeping with us, so we weren’t surprised. We knew we were going to have to move it to his own room soon, but I didn’t think I was ready.
At the beginning of May, I was asked at the last minute to attend a work conference at the beach and this conference just happened to coincide with a girls’ beach weekend I already had planned (my luck rarely works out that well!) so I was gone for almost a week. Nick decided this would be when he was going to move Sebastian into his own room. I would be away and wouldn’t have to feel guilty or not ready. I was unsure but I agreed because Nick felt very confident that he could sleep train Sebastian and I had confidence in Nick. So off I went to the beach and off Sebastian went to his own room.
For the first few weeks, Nick stayed in Sebastian’s room with him through the night, sleeping on an air mattress but it didn’t take long until Nick was able to sleep in our room again. We set up the monitor so we could go check on Sebastian if he woke up during the night and for the last few nights, we haven’t had to intervene much at all. It’s a huge success!
It’s not creepy to watch him sleep, right?
He’s become the best wake up call! He runs into our room in the morning, calling for mommy and daddy to “git up.” He will jump into bed to give us hugs and kisses and then tell us he wants oatmeal for breakfast. A small part of me will always miss having him sleep next to me during the night and waking up next to him every morning, but the improvement to our sleep – for all of us – has definitely been worth it. I just can’t believe my baby is growing up so fast, but isn’t that how it always goes?
