A Fine Line

Over the last couple of months Amanda has become a much better sleeper. In fact, although she still struggles with me she even does beautifully when Charlie puts her to bed. He's got it down.

However, she's still waking up way too early in the morning. Sometimes 5:00a, 5:30a, 6:00a, all way too early for me. When she does get up that early it's not like she plays in her crib happily. No, she screams louder than you have ever heard any baby scream. Charlie and I were just talking about the fact that we don't remember either of the other two ever being that loud.

So, after waiting about 10 minutes, if you can stand the noise that long, you have to do something about it. Even though the older two have a noise maker in their room, you can still hear her over it so if they wake up then it's really big trouble. If it's still so, so early, we go into her room and tell her that it's still night time and everybody is sleeping and to go back to bed. We do not take her out of her crib. This sort of works most of the time, but she'll still cry a little bit in protest and often will start all over again 30-45 minutes later.

If it's after around 6:45a, it's a little trickier. She's most likely not going to go back after that. So, we can pick her up and start your day, pick her up and rock her for awhile, or pick her up and bring her back to our bed to sleep a little longer. Either way, we're taking her out of that crib. She's finally at the point where she likes to cuddle with us, so if we bring her to bed she may sleep an extra 30 minutes.

That's where the dilemma lies. If we bring her into bed with us, we can sleep a little bit more, or at least not have to be so functional. However, if we keep doing it, she's going to come to expect it and want it. Which could lead to us doing it earlier and earlier in the morning, which totally goes against the one and only parenting rule we have stuck to with all of our kids - do not let them sleep with us. Of course, that's just our rule. If you want to co-sleep with your kids I don't have any problems with it, just don't ask me to watch them overnight.

At this point Amanda is almost 18 months old. I know, I can't believe it either, the time has flown by. She is so close to getting on the wonderful sleep schedule the older kids are on. We are so close to finally getting a good night's sleep every single night day after day after day. We can't mess it up now.

But she's so cuddly in the morning, and warm, and most important of all she's our very last baby to cuddle in bed with. I do not want to go back on our lone standing rule, but it sure is nice to hold that cuddly baby who isn't going to want to cuddle much longer. I hope we have the will power to carry on.