One of the very first posts I wrote for this blog was about my struggles with co-sleeping. Struggles in terms of knowing that it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing with my daughter but finding it really hard to break out of the habit. I had co-slept with her from day one so it was no wonder that she didn’t want to sleep by herself in another room. It had been the same with her older brother too.
The big thing that I realised was that I needed to co-sleep just as much as my daughter. For me, it was my opportunity to ‘make it up’ to my children if i felt that I’d been too hard on them or not been fun enough in the day.
Slowly we did make progress though. It happened quite naturally as my daughter grew and matured and we were able to use bribery explain the situation.
At the same time that we had been making progress with our daughter, our six year old son started a phase of having bad dreams. Some nights he doesn’t want to go to sleep in his own bed, and others he will come into our bed in the early hours. Obviously, as always with siblings, his behaviour is rubbing off on his sister too.
So now, more often than not, they will both go off to sleep in our bed, be transported to their own but find their way back before morning!
Sometimes I find it hard to move them. I know that they sleep better in the big bed, and that they’ll come back in eventually, so it seems like a futile effort. Also, it’s quite cosy snuggled up with them both, especially if I’ve had a stressful day or I know that their day hasn’t been great.
Where does that leave us?
Right now, heading into cough and cold season, I’m not setting expectations on myself or the kids. If they need to come in with me then that’s absolutely fine.
The priority for all of us is getting as much sleep as possible, whoever’s bed that might be in.