Okay, you asked for it. Please, bear in mind a few things first:
- I am a hippy
- This is only my opinion
- I am not criticising people for doing it a different way
- I am not qualified and base all opinions on my experiences of my one small child
- You do what you want, what works for you and your happiness and L's happiness come first
- I am a hippy
- This is only my opinion
Sleep is a developmental thing. That's a fact. A child will have its own relationship with sleep and like any other developmental norms will do things at different times, in different ways and certainly differently to other babies. A child will want its own space, will settle themselves and sleep through regularly as a matter of development and not as a matter of 'learning'. It is not like reading and writing, it's like walking and talking, they do it in their own time. That said, you can of course 'train' or 'teach' your child to sleep on its own, to self-settle, to sleep through etc. That's
a personal decision. For me, I don't wish to teach Mathilda the things that go along with that sort of training. I would not want to teach her that when she cries and asks for my comfort that she cannot have it, or she must wait for it. She will learn when she's older that sometimes you have to wait but atm she is too young to understand anything other than my actions. In fact I would go as far as to say that it is right and proper that she still needs this comfort as she falls asleep.
I am very aware that now is the key time for separation anxiety and I know how important my actions are for reassuring her about my place in her life and hers in mine. A secure
attachment at this time is of most importance to me and I think believing that a child of this age can be labelled as 'manipulative' or 'pushing the boundaries' is negative and counter-productive. Actually, they are manipulative as a matter of survival. How else do they ensure nourishment, safety and comfort at an age when they do not developmentally have the tools to communicate in any other way?
Mathilda likes to feed to sleep, something which is normal at her age imho. You could not hope to put her down and expect her to fall asleep on her own. She'd just stand up again and refuse. I feed her to sleep at about 8.30pm and she sleeps on my knee for a while, she will stay asleep if I pass her to dh and we can put her down on a blanket on the floor so I can pick her up and feed her again if necessary or so that she can see we're here if she wakes up. We take her to bed when we go, she sleeps next to me. She did feed periodically in the night but recently has reached a stage where she can self-settle. Literally in the last couple of weeks she's started to wake at night, will talk to herself, roll onto her belly, sing a bit and then drift off again. I will take my cues from her as to when she's ready to be in her own bed. I put her in the cot to play and I put her down asleep in there for naps and stay nearby. She is happy in her cot, it is not a place of anxiety or constraint. She will play happily in there and sleep in there. Eventually she will always sleep in there but in her own time.
I fully admit that it's hard this way and consuming but I know for me that dd is still so little. She will sleep happily on her own, in her room and in her own time. Of course, dh has felt pushed out and we struggled a bit but found other ways. We have 'our time' during the day or in the middle of the night as she's completely zonko and we can sneak out. Grandparents take dd some days or in an evening for a couple of hours and we do all the things we want to do. Our marital bed is the family bed now and we have to be a bit creative in order to have a physical relationship but it's better in the middle of the day with the curtains open. Norty. I take dh into consideration along with dd. If he was truly unhappy this way I'd find a way to change it. She is tiny for such a short amount of time and we can work round her.
Mathilda is learning about the world and learning her place in it. Atm, her place is often with me and I know it would feel wrong to stick her in a room, shut the door and listen to the sobs. I also know that the way this would make me feel is indicative of how wrong it is. I try to follow my instincts with Mathilda and if my gut is telling me it's wrong, if I'm sobbing then not only am I not happy but Mathilda will pick up on this and bedtime will be more about anxiety and force than cuddles and bonding. She will not be in by bed when she's 18.
I don't see co-sleeping, needing me and not sleeping 7-7 as a problem, I just try to accept it as the way things are and find ways that work for us.
But I'm a hippy. You know that. I wear a straw hat.