We finally transitioned Ellie into sleeping in her own bed. This process was a slow and painful one for all parties involved. We had been trying (and failing) for months. Finally, last weekend was the last straw. There just wasn’t room for two adults and a child—though I am not convinced any bed is big enough for Ellie with as much as she moves at night. We tried getting her to fall asleep in our bed then moving her over to her crib. Unfortunately, without fail she would wake up and scream as soon as you were lowering her to the mattress. We tried letting her cry it out—whoever invented that method was an evil, heartless person. Rocking her to sleep didn’t work because she would stay awake out of spite. Any bright idea we had was rendered useless. Finally I decided to stay with her until she fell asleep in her crib. So, I grabbed a chair pulled it up to the crib as close as possible and sat quietly by as she tried everything she could think of to break me. She cried, she held my hand, she said “mama”, she smiled, and cried some more. Any time that she would stand up, I would just lay her back down (without saying a word). Finally, she realized that I wasn’t going anywhere and she fell asleep. The first night took soooooo long. I felt like I was in her room for hours—and the crying and hand holding were so hard for me to resist. The second night was much easier and so on. It has been a week now and we all seem to have gotten used to the new routine.
I think the reason we were successful in getting her to sleep on her own this time was that she was ready too. The fact that I was in her room made it seem less scary, and the fact that I stayed silent and kept laying her down made it seem like I meant business—and I did (but boy it was rough on me too).
The transition from formula to milk was easy, the bottle to a cup was painless; sleeping in her own bed was literally a nightmare. I shudder at the thought of what we will go through when it is time to give up the pacifier.
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