So what do you do?

When I was pregnant, we discussed this and there was no way on earth I was going to put up with it. Yet here I am! What am I waffling on about?

Bedtime practices & night-time disturbances.

I was going to be a 'put him down awake' type of mummy. I was going to be a 'he must learn to settle himself' type of mummy. Guess what? Turns out that I'm not!

When they're tiny weeny you can be cuddling them and all of a sudden they've fallen asleep. "Oh!" you say, "when did that happen?" So what are you supposed to do? Wake them up so you can then put them down in their moses basket awake (and screaming because they don't know why they're not asleep anymore)? What a prize bitch you'd have to be!

Anyway, I digress. We started with the bedtime 'awake under his cot mobile' malarky and it worked. Until he was 5 months old and learnt to roll over & grab the mobile. Hmmm, that went a bit wrong. Drop cot down a level, tuck end of sleeping bag in = sorted!

Then he got a bad cold. And he couldn't get to sleep flat on his back because his throat and nose got clogged up and he couldn't breathe and got scared. So to help this we cuddled him to sleep.

Oops!

And I say 'oops' because that's what we still have to do every night and he's 18 months old now.

Hmmm…

To be fair, I think it was also the change of milk-feeds that exacerbated the problem. If The Boy falls asleep in my arms having his bedtime bottle, what am I supposed to do; poke him 'til he wakes up & then ignore his tears? Just so I can do what Gina Ford says? (or as she is known in this house, 'evil, nazi woman')

So why am I sat here in this Ikea chair (you know the one; cream bucket chair, looks comfy but not when you've been sat in it for an hour and your arse is numb) holding my sleeping baby? 'Ignore him' you say. 'Let him cry it out' you say. 'No, bog off, he's my child' I say. I cannot listen to him cry. Can't do it. I'm not an advocate of controlled crying, I actually think it's a bit cruel (* disclaimer at bottom)

The reason why I won't use it is because The Boy does not wake up or play silly buggers at night. He slept through from 10pm – 6am at 6 weeks old! He goes down at 7.30pm & wakes up about 6.30am+. If he cries in the night, it will be because he's suffering from wind (he still gets colicky pains sometimes) or teething pains. And then he's sobbing in his sleep. I can't ignore him when he's hurting, it goes against every cell in my body.

So we cuddle him. It's not like we're going to be doing it forever. Can you imagine? 15 years old? Exactly.

And we have stopped excusing ourselves because he's our child! I don't criticise you for using a dummy with your three and a half year old child, or when he nutted The Boy on his 4 month old nose, so don't condemn me. (Oh I appear to be having a go at a work colleague here. How did that happen?)

And anyway, look at him…

God, my arse is numb.

(* I apologise to anyone to whom I may have caused offense: I'm not implying you're bad mothers if you use controlled crying, you're braver than I am. That's why your child is asleep, and I'm awake at 2am!)