Reading through all the leaflets and general information we were given out in hospital this time, I noticed something that I found odd. Every piece of advice about feeding your baby said to feed your baby and immediately put them back into their Moses basket or crib, feet at the bottom. Sounds easy, right?! Except the majority of babies absolutely will not settle in a Moses basket easily. You rock them for an hour until you're sure they're asleep and then gently place them down into their basket and immediately their little eyes ping open. I remember getting so frustrated with Henry in the early days, or should I say nights, when he Just. Wouldn't. Sleep. I'd read all that advice in books and in the information packs that they give out in hospital and didn't understand why my baby didn't do as he was supposed to. Why didn't he love his beautiful white John Lewis Moses basket as much as I did? I could go on about those sleep deprived nights but that's not that point. Ultimately that's what drove us, and millions before us, to cosleeping. So surely instead of just the standard advice of always placing a baby down in their crib after a feed, we ought to also be helping new mummies to cosleep safely since the majority of parents resort to it at some stage after having a baby. I'm sure all too many fall asleep in the middle of the night with their babies in bed with them under the covers or next to pillows. Or even worse, on the sofa. They're tired. They've had no advice other than to put the baby in that crib which actually turned out to be an impossible task, so who could blame them? Anyway, that's a rant for another day and not the point in this blog post. All I'd say is, read up on the safe sleep guidelines before having a baby. A bedside crib is absolutely the safest place for your baby, but you can cosleep safely too, and after a serious lack of sleep, there's a good chance you'll end up doing it at some point, so it's better to be safe than sorry.
As Henry grew up his sleep didn't really improve and he'd wake up at night asking to be in with us. Again we resisted as much as we could, but the reality was we could sit on the floor next to his bed for an hour to get him back to sleep (several times a night), or we could put him in our bed where he'd be asleep in literally 10 seconds and the next we'd hear from him would be in the morning. It then became like musical beds in our house really ,Henry always started off the night in his bed and we would be in ours, but Henry and I usually woke up in the spare room together so that Mr B could get a decent sleep before going to work too. The bed in the spare room saved our sanity many a time. So that's how things have been for us for the past couple of years and it's been fine. Every night sees a different sleeping arrangement but we all get the maximum amount of sleep possible and everyone's happy, especially Henry.
Roll on getting pregnant and I was worried about how we'd manage with a toddler who liked to be in bed with his mummy and a baby that needed feeding throughout the night. I tried not to think about it too much, aware of how quickly toddlers could change and naively thought that Henry might be happily sleeping all night in his room by the time his baby brother or sister was born. Except he wasn't. So on our first night home from hospital Mr B and I had a quick 'how are we going to play this?' conversation before bed....there's nothing like some forward planning and organisation is there?! Henry ended up sleeping with his daddy for a lot of that night and I was in the double bed in the nursery with Archie. It seemed like the perfect solution for now and we assumed night 2 would be the same....until Henry was sick in bed at 10pm and desperately needed his mummy. And I desperately needed to be there to cuddle my poorly little boy. Except I had another little boy who also desperately needed me for my milk. So there I was in the nursery in a bed covered in towels nursing Archie two hourly throughout the night, hand sanitising like never before in case he got ill and then mopping up sick and cuddling a poorly little boy in between feeds. Mr B obviously helped as much as he could with the sick but the reality was that neither child needed him, they both needed me. At the same time. Welcome to being a mummy of two!! I cried a bit, told myself to get a grip and we all got the most sleep we could that night, again thanks to some good old cosleeping. And since then Henry's generally started off the night in his bed and come in with me once he's woken up in the night. I've had Archie in his cot on one side and Henry cuddled in on the other. And do you know what? It's been absolutely lovely. I've missed spending time with just Henry and in the night after I've fed Archie and he's finally sleeping soundly again, there's nothing nicer than turning over and snuggling into my biggest baby for 5 minutes. Watching his chest rise and fall, stroking his blonde curls and listen to his sleep-talking murmurs as he instinctively snuggles back in to his mama. I'm not sure what is so wrong about meeting the needs of your child, and if that need is simply to be close to you while they're so small, then so be it. I'm so glad that Henry doesn't feel pushed out or left out in any way and wonder whether his lack of jealousy is down to the fact that he feels happy and secure in the knowledge that nothing has changed since his brother came along, we adore him the same as always. He's allowed to sleep in with us if he needs to or wants to, and we're getting plenty of time to snuggle too. I feel like we're coping better with parenthood this time around too because we're all getting sleep this time. I'm napping with both boys pretty much every afternoon for a couple of hours and then sleeping as well as I can through the night, especially since Archie is considerably better than his brother was in the newborn days and also because we've ditched the Moses basket in favour of a Sleepyhead in the cot. If Archie's having a bad night, I don't think twice about having him in with me and I'm not up and down the stairs to Henry all night either.
Mr B has been able to get a decent amount of sleep during the week before work and it means that he does the early shift on a weekend while I spend the morning in bed, like I have done since Henry was born. It might not work for everyone, but it works for us, and having my spare bed full of my little boys has been way way nicer than I ever thought it could be.
One of these days neither of them will need me as desperately as they've both needed me this past fortnight and I know that then I'll give anything to be back where we are now, snuggled up together in one bed, nap time after nap time, night after night.
Our night time reality, captured by Mr B as he delivered our overnight drinks before going to sleep himself! Henry and I in the big bed, Archie tucked up in his Sleepyhead next to us.
* If anyone tries to tell you that they'll still be in your bed when they're teenagers or that they won't be able to ever fall asleep independently or sleep on their own, just ignore them. I slept in my mum's bed for years but I stopped eventually and I've never had any issue with falling asleep on my own. Just love your babies, sleep safely and ignore crappy advice from well-meaning friends and relatives.
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