Just Like Having A Newborn In The House...

Only, with more frosting. And it's the frosting that motivated me to get out of bed this morning. Thinking about eating a spoonful, right from the container...

That's the beauty of being an adult. No matter how much our children keep us up at night, or how nighttime feels like a game of musical beds, we can still choose to eat frosting for breakfast.

I have a new theory about Marin's night time trouble- it's milk. She LURVES her some dairy- especially cheese. And I love giving it to her, because it's full of calories. And if she's consuming lots of calories during the day, she won't want to nurse all night, right? Now I'm wondering if she is possible irritated by the dairy and therefore cries at night because of tummy aches. Ok, let's back up. She CLEARLY has tummy aches- she wouldn't be a genetic Green baby if she did not consume her weight in Mylicon by age 1- but I'm not sure if it's just her anatomy or if it has more to do with her diet. So I think I'll cut out ALL dairy for awhile and see if it helps. On the one hand, I'm hoping it doesn't. Because what am I going to feed her if she can't have cheese/yogurt/milk? But on the other- sleep sounds so inviting.

Which leads me to my new invention idea. Which also leads me to a "Hill to Die On" topic (Swistle's words)- sleep sharing. But! I have such a cozy and nice (and also: small) readership that I am confident that we can all be nice.

The Green Family Nighttime Plan is as follows: We sleep wherever it is that we all get the most sleep. Ideally, this means in our own beds, but sometimes it means the kids are in bed with us or we are in their bed or whatever. For the twins, we always put them to bed in their own beds, but often would let them come and join us, in the name of getting more sleep, during the night. We've had "rules" like- if it's before 4am they have to nurse and go back to their own beds, if it's after 4am they can stay. We went through a time when we would each take one twin and sleep with her in separate beds. We've had times when we lay with them at night until they are asleep, and other times when they go to bed on their own, no problems.

Our sleep situation has gone through many phases, but always resulted in us getting a satisfactory amount of sleep. Also: a minimum of crying on the twins' part. We are not in the "cry it out camp". Instead, we follow the "meet a need and the need goes away" camp.

Then Marin came along. She slept with us, in my arms, exclusively for her first 6 months. I had lots and lots of icky complications after her birth, so this was purely for my own convenience. I had an extremely slow recovery- complete with a handful of extra surgeries and TONS of doctors visits and stupid, stupid tests, so I NEEDED to sleep. I needed to not get up at night. I slept very well with her there. Around six months, I started putting her to sleep in her crib, and she was completely fine with it. She still loves her crib.

But. She has nights where she cries a lot. And then she toots. Then sleeps some, cries some more, toots some more. We massage her tummy, give her gas drops, help her find a comfortable position etc. We do not sleep much on these nights.

So! My invention is: a full or queen or king sized crib, sturdy enough for an adult. That way you could lay with your baby as needed, them hop out and go back to your own bed too.

That would be handy, right? I could make a fortune on this, right? Because, the way I see it, the co-sleeping issue revolves around wanting one's OWN space for sleeping. I want that too. But I also want to sleep, and I don't want to keep jumping out of bed on nights when Marin is having gas attacks. So, it would be perfect to be able to crawl in with her once in awhile, and if I got uncomfortable, sneak back to my own bed without disturbing her. When she's in MY bed, the only way to get more space for myself is to move her back to her crib. Sometimes this works fine; other times it wakes her up.

So! A Queen-sized crib. With silent rails for quick and easy REMOVING OF THYSELF. One can dream....

(That is, if one can get enough sleep to dream...)