The Sleep Situation.

Sleep situation. The topic of the day. Actually, the topic for the past 6+ months. Specifically, on the blog, the topic the past two days. Yesterday I talked about how this {sleep time} is a time I cherish with Elliana {very much so}. However, today, I will talk about the "problems" that we have run into with our sleep situation {after we put her to sleep} since Graham was born.

You see, when Elliana learned how to climb out of a crib when she was roughly 20 months old, our lives were in for a drastic change. Prior to this little "situation" Elliana was sleeping 13 hours through the night. She went to bed at 7pm, and woke up around 8am. She would go to be with no problem. She could be wide awake, you set her in the crib, and she would say "night night mama" and then drift off to sleep whenever she felt like it. No rough housing. No horsing around. Quiet as a bird. Er, a quiet bird.

And then the situation happened. And clearly we couldn't leave her in the crib that she insisted on climbing out of. And clearly we needed a big girl bed. So after a few clicks and searches, a bed was ordered and that was that. In the meantime, this meant the toddler would be sleeping with the parents. Us. In our bed. And? We discovered a new found love for this co-sleeping world.

Two weeks later, it comes {the bed}, we set it up and off she goes. She does okay a couple of nights. But since she had grown accustomed to us sleeping with her, it was now a "necessary" thing that we lay down with her until she fell asleep.

Sometimes this took ten minutes. Sometimes 45. Sometimes... I would even fall asleep with her. And often times... she would wake up in the middle of the night and come into bed with us. Okay, like every night.

She had nothing against her big girl bed. She loved it. She just always wanted one of us, specifically me, in there with her.

Regardless, we continued on with this for months. There were even nights that we skipped the toddler bed and would just lay down with her in our bed and that was that.

Fast forward to the baby coming.

I need another cup of coffee for this one.

Lets just try to make this as short and sweet as possible since I have already written a novel and I haven't even gotten to the core of ... the situation.

You see, the baby boy came and we quickly realized that uh-oh what are we going to do with our usual night time routine? How do we put her down? What if the baby is crying at the same time as I am trying to put E to sleep? What if Elliana is crying because she needs her mama? What about when she wakes up in the middle of the night and comes to our room? And HELLO the baby is a newborn which means he wakes up every two hours! What will that do to her sleep?

Oh yes, all the wonderful questions. All the different scenarios. All which pleasantly occurred at our house time and time again.

Let me paint a picture for you of what would happen.

We would do the usual bath time, story time, pj time routine. Then I'd feed and change the baby, and off to Andrew's arms he would go. I would then climb into bed with Elliana {per her insistent request} and we would try to go to sleep. Sometimes this would take the longer time than usual. You know the 45 minutes to an hour that I mentioned. And then I would hear the baby scream. Andrew would run upstairs to try to get me, and just when I think that Elliana is fast asleep, she awakes. And then she screams and cries. And although Andrew tries so very hard to calm her down and lay with her... oh no, it's a MAMA mama MAMA must do it type thing.

So then I find myself running back and forth from baby to toddler until finally she fell asleep. And although I wish I could say that once she was asleep she stayed asleep... that's not quite the case here.

Sometimes she wouldn't wake up until midnight. Sometimes just a couple hours later. Sometimes not until 2 am. Whatever the time, she would come into our room crying. Of course we welcomed her with open arms, gave her kisses, tucked her in right next to us and called it a night. The end.

I wish.

Remember, we have a newborn on our hands. So he's waking up every two hours. Then Elliana will wake up crying. Which turns into screaming. Which turns into wanting to go downstairs and then... you guessed it... more screaming. We were so confused by all this, as it was so new to us. Figured it was just the whole baby interrupting her sleep. Understandable. However, we were running on little sleep, easily frustrated, and did not know how to handle the situation. Send her to her room. Try to lay her down with us again. Talk to her. Hold her. Even got frustrated with her. Nothing worked, nothing.

In the morning, Elliana would wake up happy as a clam and would go about her day as though she had gotten 13 hours of full un-interrupted sleep. Her mama and papa though? Texting and calling back and forth trying to figure out how to fix the situation.

We tried more things. Tried the whole mama sleep downstairs with baby. Nope, didn't work. Tried the whole papa sleep with Elliana. Nope didn't work. She always needed mama... but baby needed mama too... and I couldn't leave one or the other.

I was seriously at a loss. At this point, I was ready to pay someone to figure out how to put me in two places at once.

And then one night, after getting super frustrated with Elliana {although not her fault, it was my lack of sleep}, I decided that we had to come up with a new plan.

So we did. And we have been testing it out the past week and it's been working. Working. Actually WORKING. For now.

I put Elliana to sleep as we always do. A time I cherish and something I plan to do for as long as she lets me. Then every time she wakes up, I run to her and put her back into her bed and climb back in. Usually at this point it doesn't take long for her to fall asleep as she's super tired, and then I sneak out again. This happens about 2-3 times during the night, and then she sleeps in until about 8 {in her own room}, never having to cry and get upset, and getting the rest that she needs. And her mama and papa are getting better rest, not frustrated, and feel better about the situation.

We hope that as time passes and we continue to do this that eventually she will stop waking up in the middle of the night and will continue to sleep in her room.

It's sad to see my baby grow up. Hard to see her have to go through some difficult and frustrating times for her. But also amazing to watch her adapt to these situations and continue to teach us how to be better parents.

Like I told Andrew the other day... "We aren't perfect. We won't always get it right. But we are always learning because we love our children so much."

Being parents doesn't get easier, but our children make it well worth it.