Insurmountable

Oct6

Recently talking to my cousin we had a conversation about how small tasks while sleeping become insurmountable. Things like blankets falling on the floor have us huddled under pillows because it is clearly an insurmountable task to reach down and find the blanket.

Last night was our first night visiting Tyler in his new place. Tyler very nicely offered me and Ivy the bedroom and only bed in his barely furnished house so that he didn’t wake us all up early in the morning when he left for work.

Last night I found myself sleeping on a twin bed between Ivy and Piper.

In case you were curious that is approximately 300 pounds of living things sleeping in a twin bed – not a good idea.

In the middle of the night I knew it was not a good idea.

In the middle of the night getting either dog or kid out of the bed – totally insurmountable.

Tonight I gave Tyler his room back!

When things started to get really crazy was after a minor bed wetting incident. And I use the term minor in regards to urine amount only, everything else about it was a calamity. The chaos was over and I was trying to fall back asleep when Ivy started kicking at Piper because she didn’t have room for her legs,while trying to steal my pillow and Piper who had gotten off the bed when she got kicked at was staring at me waiting to get let back on. Instead of doing something to solve the problem for the night, any number of somethings that make perfect sense while I’m not sleeping, like moving Ivy to the floor and locking Piper out of the room, all I could think about was falling back asleep quickly. So I turned myself into a human wall between the fighting kid and dog and went back to sleep. I’m pretty sure I nodded off just after hearing Ivy say “I can’t fall asleep” Which was a good thing or I would have mentioned that it was likely because she had yet to stop talking or wiggling and I’m certain I would have had trouble phrasing that constructively. Instead I fell asleep and spent an overly cozy night as the filling in an Ivy-Piper sandwich.

Someday I’ll figure out how to get that blanket back off the floor,and if I can’t figure that out defending my space in the bed will surely continue to be an insurmountable task in the middle of the night.

That’s why tonight Ivy is sleeping on the floor by her uncle Tyler and Piper and I have moved to the living room floor.

We are on a queen sized mattress.

We are not concerned with early morning noise.

The only thing that is cutting into our sleep is late night blogging!

“Nnnn…ummm…OK.”

Aug30

Since Ivy was born I have been a big fan of the theory that everyone should sleep where everyone in the house gets the most sleep.

I became a fan of this theory when we co-slept with Ivy the first night she was born. I hadn’t been specifically planning on co-sleeping, but we did it and it worked great. Why mess with a good thing? Ivy shared a bed with us for a few months before moving into her crib in a separate room. We also co-slept with Clara up until she started the dreaded “sleep crawling.” Now Clara has also moved out into her own room and crib across the hall from Ivy’s room where she now sleeps in a regular bed.

Or should I say where Ivy slept in a regular bed. We have now entered a new phase of sleeping arrangements that I did not foresee.

It started when Ivy kept showing up in our bed in the middle of the night. Going with my theory if she was actually sleeping when she showed up, I probably would have left her there. Ivy is not fun to sleep with, first she spends far to long, talking, whispering, wiggling and touching my face, then when she does fall asleep she turns into a dead weight that is impossible to move off your pillow and is only revived when it involves wiggling and flailing around to take up more of the bed. Ivy in our bed is not a plan where everyone gets the most sleep.

Here is how it would go:

Ivy would come into our bed.

I would try to ignore her.

It wouldn’t work because she would do really awful things to me (like set paper snowflakes on my eyelids, and if that doesn’t sound awful then clearly you’ve never been subjected to it!)

I would get up and put her crying back into her bed.

She would want to snuggle with someone.

Depending on my level of kindness (directly related to amount of face touching I had endured in the last few minuets) and time of night, I might lay down with her for a few minutes.

I would get back up and go back to bed. Or if John returned her to her bed he would fall asleep there and I would never see him again.

Ivy would show back up…

If you add into that the fact that Clara still wakes up in the night you have the recipe for one grumpy sleep deprived family!

One memorable night recently I put her back in bed three times only to find that when John got out of bed in the morning she had been sleeping on the other side of him! Something had to change.

A few daytime discussions about how we all sleep in our own beds was getting me nowhere. Ivy’s room was “Not for sleepin’ in”, she was lonely, her room was dark and before we knew it she would be back in our bed poking at my face. Then Ivy told me she wanted to sleep with Clara. I said, “Nnnn…. ummm…. OK.” And we tried it. Thank goodness I was able to curb the automatic “No.” that almost slipped out!

Clara goes to sleep about an hour before Ivy, Ivy goes through her night time routine then slips into Clara’s room and sleeps on the bed we’ve made for her on the floor in there.

Since sleeping with Clara, she has not: come into our bed,woken Clara up, been woken by Clara (how, I have no idea, I think the girl could sleep through WWIII),or been woken by John or I (she has been stepped on at least once with no reaction).

Then in the morning Ivy likes to tell me that I can’t come in when they wake up because they are playing. Really could life get any better?! I have been able to laze in bed for an extra half hour or so while I listen to them play- I have nothing but good things to say about our current arrangement!

I’ll admit it’s a little odd, I never thought I’d have a three year old who would want to sleep on the floor in her baby sisters room. I also never thought that when I said “OK. Great!” when I was informed by that same three year old that she was peeing in the bathroom that I should inquire if she was using the toilet… clearly there is quite a bit of this parenting gig I haven’t thought of yet.

The Disease Part III The Sleep Crawler

Jul23

By now you are perhaps wondering what did prompt me to move Clara into her unfinished room. I mean really, I’d held out for nine months and have written two long posts about how I thought it was a bad idea, why did I cave? I’ll tell you why, because she’s a sleep crawler, that’s why. Here is the whole story:

Clara started out sleeping in bed with us, then as she became mobile she took naps and started the night out sleeping in her own crib in our room. Inevitably she ended up in bed with us by morning. This is because I nursed her, and there is no point in staying awake when you could be sleeping, and so therefore she ate, I slept and she was still there in the morning.

This worked great for many months until Clara started doing this crazy thing where she crawls around in bed with her eyes closed then flops down when her head hits something and lays where she falls sleeping. Sleep crawling? I don’t know, but whatever it is it is not conducive to co-sleeping. She would finish nursing then lurch around the bed between John and I like a really drunken sailor. I would start awake when she would move, watch her flop down against John, immediately fall back asleep only to be woken up to her lurching back toward me and flopping on top of me instead. For awhile I tried to just get up and put her back in her crib. This was difficult for two reasons. The first, I had to get up. The other was that once Clara was back in her crib she did her crazy sleep crawling in there instead. John and I are much softer to land on than crib rails so she would bang her head on the side which would wake her all the way up, then see us and want to come back in bed. Back in bed it never improved. Once I woke up as she crashed into my knees, multiple times I grabbed her as she was headed for the edge. Our happy co-sleeping set up was suddenly missing the the oh so important sleeping portion of co-sleeping. Clara had to go. The girl needed bars, she needed walls, she needed her own room. So last Monday after an especially bad night because of the nighttime crawler I moved her into her own room lack of baseboards and all.

After a few nights of squawking Clara settled in and sleep has more or less returned for everyone. Some nights I still wake up and her her rustling around and then a distinct thump as she hits the side of her crib but she almost always goes right back to sleep.

In addition to all the of advantages that come from having a baby free bedroom we have also gained the peephole advantage. At some point someone replaced the door knob on Clara’s door with one that wasn’t the same and left a hole in the door. I purposely set the crib up opposite and now I have a perfect little spy hole to watch and see what she is doing when she is supposed to be sleeping. I can watch this: Turn into this, and so I’m conceding that moving her into her almost finished room was the right thing to do. I just hope the sleep crawler does not turn into a sleep walker or nights or going to get really interesting when she graduates to a bed!