Under the sea or clouds and rainbows???

[MummyMiddleton]

Or baby boy is due on November 10th. We have a room for him but we don't want to buy and furniture or decor until we know what theme we are choosing. We are stuck between under the sea and clouds and rainbows. Both are equally cute.
We would paint the walls dark turquoise/aqua for under the sea and pale blue for clouds and rainbows. My mum has an art degree and will be painting the decor on top of the base colour (sea creatures and plants or clouds connected by rainbows).

If you had to choose, what would you go for?

Sirzy

I agree. The only reason we are not doing co sleeping is because it can become a habbit and stay until pre school age and beyond. I watched an episode of Supernanny where a 6 YEAR OLD wouldnt sleep in her own bed. 6!

If he cries, we are not just going to leave him. One of us will get up and take care of him and comfort him, just not to sleep. We will comfort him until he calms down but then put him in his moses basket and see if he can fall asleep by himself. We wont put him down crying. We will soothe him, but to a point where he is settled but still awake.

Like has been said don't become too set in your ways before the baby is even here. He may well have very different ideas!

Good luck. My DS was never drowsy but awake, ever. DD seems more mellow but it's early days.

I think your friend was very lucky, just as I think one of my friends, who co slept not through choice, was unlucky.

*- Not sleeping on his own until very late (toddler age). We are not having him in our bed past the baby stage unless he is ill. Its best that way.

• Not having a strong bond with his dad. If he always sleeps on me then he will always want me. We are planning to do things as gender neuterally as possible. This was actually DHs idea and I like it. He is going to have regular skin on skin time with us both and we will both bathe with him and wake for him in the night.*

Really your ideas need to loosen up. My just 1 year old slept on me and transitioned to his own cot in his room at 6 months with no problems. He would go down at 7ish wake for a quick bottle at 1-2ish then up at 7. Hes dropped the 1-2 feed in the past few weeks.
His bond with his dad is amazing. He cries when he leaves the room, he's largely Indifferent towards me when I leave. He didn't sleep in DP becasue he didn't trust that he'd be safe, however he did absolutely everything else. Still gets in the bath with him now.

I get it, I really do. We're all experts before we had one. Just becasue you know a little angel there is no guarantee yours will be the same. Take weaning, I did everything the 'evidence' tells you to do... Still got a little bugger who's fussy, won't drink anything but milk and would live off wotsiys, dry pasta and raspberries given the chance. And here I was judging all those mum's with fussy kids... I knew nothing.

My 6 year old sneaks in for a cuddle to bedhog around once a fortnight. It's something I cherish. She won't do it forever.

And actually if we're going to talk evidence, longitudal evidence suggests that co-sleeping till around 1 year old promotes sound attachment and good self esteem.

We are planning to do things as gender neuterally as possible.

Good for you. We did too, but given it was me with the boobs (and I expressed exclusively for 9 months so even when DD was asleep through the night I was awake every 4 hours to pump) and DH worked away apart from 36 hours per week there were limits.

Baby sleep is as much about evolution and nature as it is about nurture, OP. You could do exactly what your friend did and end up with the opposite effects.

I agree on the boobs thing. No matter how much we wish upon a star, DH will never be able to breast feed. Granted. But we are lucky to have a working arrangement that suits us. We both help run our home business. Neither of us "go" to work. We work from home.

That's what everyone tries to do OP. No one thinks 'oh let's have the baby sleep on me all the time because it's so convenient' it's really hard because if you sleep you are basically at risk of killing the baby.. so baby sleeping on mum is often a last resort.

Because sometimes that is the only place they will settle. My 5mo sleeps brilliantly now but when I was breastfeeding he would wake up / cry every single time I put him down. And you get to the point where you will do anything for the baby to sleep. In the middle of the night when you haven't slept, baby is screaming because they haven't slept, you really won't give a shit about gender stereotypes!

Mine fed every couple of hours in the night . We co slept for ages just to save my sanity Both ended up in their own beds and sleep well now!

I hope I can manage on little sleep. I often stay up until ungodly hours playing video games anyway.
I only had 4 hours sleep last night and I feel fine. I didnt even have to stay up last night, I just wanted to play Minecraft and got carried away. Im not a big sleeper, never have been. Im a go to bed late, get up at the crack of dawn person, DH is the same. We are both gamers so we are used to it.

I would give anything to have a tiny scrunched up newborn DS asleep on me again

They're little for such a little time, chuck the rule books out and do what's best for your baby OP

We are doing whats best for our baby. Its good for a baby to get love and attention, but over attatchment can cause seperation anxiety at older ages. Seperation anxiety is horrible for everyone imvolved, especially the child.

Involved*

Your friend's baby is a 'delight' for you to look after because she learnt from a young age that her cries will be ignored. She doesn't cry anymore because she knows no-one will come. That is a pretty awful thing to teach a tiny baby.

And just because one co-sleeping child on Supernanny was still doing so at 6 does not, by any possible stretch of the imagination, mean that all, or even most will.

It's a baby. Not a textbook. You can't know what's right in this sense until the baby has actually been born.

The experiences of posters with more than one child where both have needed very different in the sense of support to sleep surely shows that?

Sorry, you want to sleep train so that you can stay up all night gaming?

My friend didnt just leave her when she cried. She did what we are planning to do. Soothed her until she was sleepy but not asleep and then put her down. She was so tired she just fell asleep. Eventually she learned to self regulate.

I'd put down the books and enjoy my baby, he sounds like a science experiment

TittyGolighty

If you read my comment you will se I never said that. I said we dont need much sleep because we are gamers. We are used to minimal sleep. We wouldnt neglect our baby for video games. Wtf

OP, please please please come back and tell us how your plans to once your baby is her

*Here!

Under the sea sounds magical. Also don't worry re poo comments etc, it doesn't always happen, we've never had a poonami or projectile vomiting (she's been sick 3 times in 11 months, went down her front and didn't hit any walls/furniture). We also helped her self soothe and it worked great, she slept 7-7 from about 4 months, we'd try give her a bottle around 10:30 but she started taking less and less then refused it, so weaned herself off it, same with the dummy. Obviously all babies are different and i know we've been super lucky, i just wanted to share that babies like that do exist, just stay chilled, stressing will stress the baby. 😊

We dont see him as a science experiment, we just want him to have the best upbringing possible. And using my BTEC and other sourses we think we can create that. We want the best for him so he becomes well behaved, loved, kind and an indipendent thinker.