Co-Sleeping with a Twist

So here we go. Yet another post about sleep on this blog. Yawn. To recap, Ellen slept for 12 hours straight, in her crib, at a very young age. It went downhill from there. The months of June and July are blurry (and the posts on this blog are lighter) because she made it a habit of waking up three times a night, on a good night. That was bad, but what was worse was that I would get into her crib with her (yes, in her crib) to nurse her back to sleep and fall asleep myself. I'd wake up with a stiff neck and go back to my bed. Then we'd do that again at least two more times. So she was waking up three times a night, but I was waking up six! And sleeping in odd positions. My back was hurting so bad that I couldn't exercise and things were coming unwound quickly. A couple of weeks ago, however, we found the fix! We now have a queen mattress on her floor and she and I both sleep there each night. At first I just went to sleep there for the night, but now I nurse her to sleep at 8pmish, go to sleep in my bed, and then go into her room when she wakes up around midnight. She probably wakes up the same amount, but neither of us really wake up. She just nurses for a minute and we both drift off to sleep again... cuddled together : )

I can tell that Ellen likes the new setup as much as I do. Now when she gets tired she crawls into her room, onto her bed, grabs her bunny and binky and smiles at me. The Montessori folks actually do the mattress thing from day one. I can see why now - I love it. If I had another kid I'd not even fool with the crib.

As for me, after a few good nights of sleep I am feeling like myself again. My back pain was gone almost instantly. It's amazing how healing sleep is for us.