What was your experience moving co-sleeping dcs to their own bed/rooms?

[phdlife]

Because here bedtime's suddenly turned into a 3-ring circus.

He's 21m and some shenanigans had started in our room, but even though he happily agreed to move to the Big Boy Bed 4 nights ago, he is

a. really upping the ante with reasons to sit up/chat/not sleep, everything from playing with his own shadow on the wall to announcing he needs to go to my sister's house to feed her fish
b. demanding - and to be fair, giving - approximately 5000 kisses (toes, fingers, knees, cheeks, tummy, hair, etc etc etc). then 5 minutes later, trying it all again (this one is REALLY hard to quash!)
c. point blank refusing to go to bed for dh
d. taking aaaaages to settle, even once he does stop the malarky. By ages I mean the shortest time so far has been half an hour.

I've been and am happy with an AP-ish approach (which is why I still lie with him til he nods off) but am finding this v hard (not least as I am about 153 months pg and tired of getting whacked in the belly as he tosses and turns!) and am having major sense of humour failure over the loss of my last few precious evenings before #2 arrives.

Suggestions?

Could you sit on the very end of the bed so he can't kick you or sit/lie on the floor beside him?

hi NA - how's your ds?

I suppose - but frankly I am fed up with it taking a full hour or more to get him down (including stories, 3-ring circus, and final settling period). And tonight he won't go at all - I'm guessing that's because he had a late nap (unavoidable long drive home) but it's making me seriously

pitiful bump

Last day of antibiotics today woo hoooooo. no more 4am wakenings!!

so pleased to hear this for you both

It used to regularly take me about 2 hours, sitting with dd1 till she fell asleep. I used to try to refuse to speak to her or look at her, but it still took forever. Then I embarked on a programme of gradual withdrawal from her room, which worked beautifully. She was a bit older, 2 and a half, but I guess it would be same.

To start with I just sat in her room by the door till she fell asleep. Then after a couple of weeks, I progressed to sitting outside her door till she fell asleep. Then after a couple of weeks of that I just went downstairs immediately.

I only worked up the determination to do this because dd2 was on the way and I knew I couldn't cope with the protracted bedtimes with a baby around too. In the event it was all quite painless and there were no tears.

oh - just noticed how very recently he moved into his own room. Ah. We did it the other way round - she was in her own bed next to our bed and I sat on our bed while she went to sleep. So I knew she could settle herself without me cuddling her, before she went into her own room. This worked really well actually.

thanks aranea.

last night I was tearing my hair out. Tonight he went down easy as pie. Go figure!

Long may it continue.

Fantastic! Maybe it was just the late nap that threw things.

no you know what it was - I had a flash of genius [modest]

just before bed he got out a new toy, a little house with 3 teddies and some furniture. So I took the teddy with the skirt (mama teddy) and the one with the trousers (baby teddy) and played a little skit with mama teddy putting baby teddy to bed, and baby teddy saying things like, "I love you mama, don't leave me" (well I wondered if that was part of his issue) and generally playing up, and mama saying, "don't worry baby, you go to sleep I'll sit right in this chair and read a book" and telling him to be good, go to sleep, and then baby bear doing it, and mama giving him a kiss and then sitting in the chair.

Think that helped.

Well it helped for 2 nights.

We didn't do it tonight and I got a bit of a circus again.

Guess you're committed to nightly puppet shows then!