When Your Child Is Old Enough To Be Sleeping Through The Night
All The Sleeping Mistakes I've Made with My Children...
I have three children, so I've made pretty much every mistake
known to Mommies, except the fatal ones, as luckily, all three
of mine are alive and well. But the biggest mistakes I've made
have been in my daughter's sleeping, or lack thereof, habits.
So, let me tell you my story, and hopefully you won't be
destined to make the same mistakes I have.
First, when she was very tiny, I let her fall asleep in bed with
my husband and me. I was nursing at first, and it was just
easier to nurse her lying down and let her fall asleep. Then I
would move her to her bassinet. Later in the night, when I
nursed her again, sometimes I would fall asleep so quickly after
nursing her, that I wouldn't even move her back to the bassinet.
She would just sleep with us for the rest of the night.
Later, when I had moved her into her crib in the nursery, I
would still let her fall asleep in our bed first. I did this
because I enjoyed it, it was convenient, and because she didn't
fall asleep easily in her room. And, I managed, in the process,
to teach my daughter that she needed to be in the room with
someone in order to fall asleep. So, guess what happened when
she woke up in the middle of the night? She wanted to come back
to our bed to fall asleep. And, worse, we gave in. Then we found
that she was sometimes willing to go back to sleep in her bed if
we gave her a cup of milk, so she began to require a cup of milk
every morning at 3:00 am, long after she should have been
sleeping through the night. She is now 2