It’s been a wild two weeks around these parts. Old Scout came down with her first sickness last Monday and has been in steady infectious mode ever since. Snot is flowing, coughs are hacking, ears (both) are infected.

Probably not the best time to start a new sleep arrangement, yet I attempted.

My inspiration came on several fronts. First, we are taking the baby to Ireland in August (yes, we know this could be a huge mistake). While co-sleeping is great in our very controlled, double-mattress home environment, we can’t risk putting T in a harmful sleep situation. Second, T is over 20 lbs and 29 in tall, a little much for me to be carting around to put to sleep every night. And every nap. And sometimes in the middle of the night. Third, I was bolstered (egged on?) by our new pediatrician. “You know,” she says, “she knows exactly what she’s doing.” 

What is she doing, you may ask? Nothing horrible, just unable to go to sleep on her own. Ever. This is nothing new. Old T-Bop has always been high maintenance when it comes to sleep. It is for this reason that c0-sleeping has worked great. To this day, except when teething or growth spurting, babe sleeps through the night next to me. She takes two, 1-2 hour naps a day. But she won’t stay in bed alone for more than hour past her 7 pm bedtime. She always needs help getting into the second hour of her nap. No self soothing is happening.

Our other big problem is roaming. When she was swaddled or immobile Scout would simply lie there. We could pat her or I could nurse her back to sleep. Now that she’s on the move, her curiosity takes over. She can be so tired that she’s about to crack but the allure of the bookshelf, the paint on the wall, the blanket, the closet is too much. And she’s off.

I’m not entirely sure where we go from here. We’ve taken the first step and bought our first crib. We also did our first crying in the crib session (like I said, not so wise when ill). I was there the whole time, in sight but not interacting. Baby literally fell asleep standing at the rail, refusing to lie down. Eventually, 20 minutes later, she buckled and sat for another 20 minutes nodding off and then perking back up. She never laid down on her own. Eventually I took her out and rocked her to sleep and put her back in. She slept for 40 whimpering minutes and our day was basically in ruins.

Jake and I are going to talk over our plan but we both feel stuck. T isn’t a tiny baby anymore. But she is a baby. We believe that her cries are signs of distress that need a response – but not all the time. We know she needs to be safe when she sleeps, but how do we transition into new sleeping patterns without me losing my mind? It’s even harder to do this when everything is going so well! She sleeps 10 hours a night without waking! She takes long naps! She’s well rested! It stinks to mess with (relative success). But we know some things have to change.