Just the Two of Us

The past couple of weeks I have re-discovered a lovely thing: sleeping with my husband. Before you click to another blog, I don't mean this in a sexy-time way.

Allow me to explain.

When our daughter was born two years ago, she was just a bit premature, which meant that Kaiser was super psycho about us feeding her every two hours. I was also trying to breast feed, which now that I look back at, my daughter was just not ready for. She didn't get it. She wouldn't even take to the bottle: we had to use a syringe. The upshot was that by the time I finished feeding her, I had about 40 minutes to "sleep" before I was up again. It was rough. Out of our exhaustion, we would let Em sleep with us.

Well, the family bed thing continued as she got older. My husband and I started teaching again when she was 3 months old, and we were unmotivated (lazy you might say) to change anything in the sleeping the department. Em's room was clear across the apartment, and it was just easier to keep her in bed with us. And to be honest, it was nice waking up with her on the weekends.

When we moved to Elk Grove, our new apartment was more conveniently laid out, so we would put Em down in her crib. She'd wake up around 1 or so, and we'd bring her to bed with us. Also (and there's gonna be plenty of parents groaning out there when they read this), we rocked her to sleep every night. Again, we didn't want to change this craziness because it was working.

Then, it stopped working.

Out of frustration, Justin just started putting Em in her crib. She was NOT happy, but then a miracle happened: SHE FEEL ASLEEP. I know to many of you this is a duh moment, but for Justin and I it is a miracle. A beautiful thing.

So now we live in our new house. Em has a cute little room of her own. At 1:30, she goes down for her nap and at 8:30, she goes to bed. No rocking. Very little crying (not every night is perfect.) And now my husband have more free time than we ever imagined.

And we have our bed back. It's kind of strange, actually. Justin rolled over last night and put his arm around me. I couldn't remember the last time he did that. We always had a baby in between us.

My husband and I have talked about having another child, but he's always been wary of it. I think because he was the one mainly responsible for getting Em to bed, and it was exhausting. Now, he seems more relaxed: we can teach our child how to sleep independently. He actually mentioned having another kid (not in the near future, but still, he's open to the idea, which is big for him.)

I'm in no rush. I'm enjoying our new sleeping arrangements, and I see no need to mess with them.

Update: I think it is wise to remind people, new parents and even those more experience, that you are setting yourself up if you brag about something your kid can do. Em was up ALL last night. Wouldn't go to sleep. Kept us up singing. Fun. Of course, she's still sleeping and I'm awake.