The Big Green Chair

Gabriel now sleeps through the night and goes to bed with few complaints, although there are the occasional nights where he insists three or four or five times that he has to go to the bathroom, despite having gone before his bath, which occurs right before stories, which occur right before bedtime. Now he still gets up ridiculously early (sometimes as early as 5:30 - on a Saturday!). Still even when he was waking up frequently in the middle of the night he always preferred my husband to me. Which was a great source of irritation at the time.

My eight-month old, however, insists that only Mommy will do... at 10:45 and 1:00 and 4:45 and 5:30... as was the case last night. My husband will go in and change him at 10:45 and sometimes at 1:00 and usually, if I stay awake, I am only in there for 10-15 minutes. However, there are many nights where I find myself, three and a half hours later, waking up in the big green rocking chair in Nick's room, with him sound asleep on the Boppy, nuzzled against my chest. While the chair is pretty comfortable, and I do have a blanket, it is still not as warm and cozy as my bed. And despite being asleep for that whole time, it doesn't feel like real sleep.

This has been a habit since Nick was moved into his own room, and I often wonder if it would just be easier to have him in bed with me the whole night, as at least I would be laying down. But with that comes the whole issue of him being in our bed and never getting him out. I never considered it with Gabe until he was about 18 months and sleeping in a toddler bed (how I wish I had learned of the tent tops for cribs before getting him a toddler bed). Once Gabe started sleeping in our bed for part of the night it was quite difficult to get him out and didn't actually happen until a month or so before Nick was born.

Still, there are many mornings where I have Pigpen bring Nick in to the bed when he wakes up around two or three or four, especially if I've just recently been sleeping in the big green chair, and let Nick attach himself for however long he pleases and go back to sleep. While my sleep is not as restful as it would be if he went right back into his crib after eating, it is at least laying down. And some nights I will take what I can get.