Sleep training: Night #1

With minimal mommy guilt, I am unashamed to admit that my favorite part of the day is bedtime.  My kids are at the stage that it is pretty painless, and if it causes any pain, its probably because of the usual frayed nerves that accompany the end of the day.  Bath, PJ's, brush teeth, read a book, prayers, snuggles, and my job as a mother has ceased until morning (let's just forget about the brief wakeups in the middle of the night).  It was all nice and routine... until now.

It began two nights ago, as we finished up reading to the boys in Brady's bed, when Eric casually suggested to Jackson that he might sleep in the bunk tonight, like a big boy.  Though not discussed, I had given this transition a lot of thought since I knew it would be a challenging change.  And Eric assumed Jackson would just peacefully fall asleep in his new bed?  I'm not exactly sure, but despite knowing deep within myself what I was in for that night and in future nights, I rolled with it.

That was at 9:00.  Fast forward to 10:30 and here are both children peacefully sleeping in the bed.

The middle part of the equation is the sticky part, the part that has transformed our stressless bedtime into my new nemesis.  For one, Jackson had taken a long 3 hour nap that day, so probably not the sleepiest and best night to start this new phase.  Every time I left the room, Jackson would cry and follow me.  I struggled between 1) knowing that if I just lay down with him and let him stroke my hair, he would fall asleep and 2) really not wanting Jackson to depend on me for sleep.  After realizing that he was not going to stay in the bed, I gave up, told him we'd try another day, and brought him to his room and his crib. 

He flipped his lid.

Around 10, I gave up trying to get him to sleep in his crib and took him back to Brady's room.  Brady had moved from the top bunk back to the bottom and as a compromise, I attempted to put Brady between Jackson and I.  This way, I was still in the room, but Brady could be the human shield so that I didn't become a crutch Jackson used to fall asleep.  That mostly didn't work, but eventually, Jackson fell asleep.

Around 2, Eric (by some miracle), heard Jackson crying and brought him into our bed.  Also not discussed, I thought that when we moved Jackson to the big bed, we'd try to put an end to him coming to sleep with us every night.  That would be tackled on the second night.

Let's just say things didn't go well.