Bo Peep Blog

It’s funny how topics of conversation come and go in the store.  I may not be at the counter 6 days/week, but 4 or 5 usually fill me in on what’s happening in town.  We had a little baby boom last month and as many of those wee ones hit the 2, 3 or 4-week mark, I’m starting to hear from moms about sleep habits (if you can call them that!  I would never call anything that changes in the span of 5 days a “habit” but then again, you can call me “cynical”.)

Kid #1 (now 8-going-on-13) had colic.  Unbelievably bad, try every different brand of gripe water, colic.  For 6 months.  That’s like, 180 days.  And 180 nights.  We walked her, we drove her, we sang to her, we put her in her carseat and put her on top of the moving clothes dryer.  We then begged, cried, pleaded and on occasion, gave her Tylenol just to get a. little. bit. of. sleep.  In the middle of all this incessant crying, we also tried sleep training.  Just like all the good baby books told us to do.  In her own damn bed, all by her little crying self.  Amazingly enough, it didn’t work!  So in the name of sanity (and feeling safe behind the wheel of my own car), we brought her into our queen-size bed, where at any time of the night when she woke up, she could nurse herself back to sleep and I could continue to half-sleep until whatever crazy hour of the morning she chose to wake up for the day.  My father asked, “How are you going to get her out of your bed?!” to which I snarkily responded, “If she’s robbing 7-11′s when she’s 14, it’s our fault for sleeping with her as a baby, okay!?”  Honestly, I couldn’t figure out (and still can’t) who it could be hurting.

For the record, she was out before she was 2.

But when I got pregnant with kid #2, we bought a king-size bed.

Co-sleeping isn’t for everyone, but moms, if you’re so sleep-deprived that you’re more dangerous to your kids during the day than you are at night when you’d rather be zzzzzz’ing, it might be time to put down “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” and pick up “The Baby Book“.  Or put down all the baby books and listen to your baby and your own body.  You know your family best and you need to trust that.  You also need to Believe that your child won’t have any memories of what their life was like before the age of 4 or so, so any mistakes you make when they’re still racking up their Firsts will be forgotten…at least by them.  You, well, as far as I can tell, get to feel guilty about little things for a loooooong time.  All part and parcel of being a mother (and yes, it IS the best job in the world).