Sleep

From the time Nolan was born it was pretty clear where he liked to sleep; on mom or dad or cuddled up as close as could be on our sides.  We allowed this.  Not only allowed it, we enjoyed it.  As the weeks passed our boy grew bigger and with the added inches and weight came a lot more movement.  We commented frequently how he could move so much yet be sound asleep.  The more he moved, the less sleep we got.  After awhile it seemed Nolan wasn't sleeping as well either and he was starting to wake up more often during the night.  So a couple of weeks ago we decided to make the transition to the crib.  Once we made the decision we started reading about the different ways to go about getting our boy to sleep in his crib as painlessly as possible (which really means how to do with as few tears as possible, from both Nolan and me).  There are a lot of books out there on this subject, which made me feel better because I can't tell you the amount of time I have thought about sleep since he was born.  Should we put him down?  Is he tired?  Should we wake him up?  Is he napping too short? Too long?  Is he getting enough sleep?  And on and on and on... 

We decided to wait until this week because Nate is off from work.  So last night we went for it. We followed Ferber's method which has you go in at certain time intervals and console them without picking them up.  I must say that it was hard, extremely hard.  Nolan cried a lot.  I cried a lot.  Nate was a trooper and checked on both of us frequently.  Eventually Nolan drifted off for a couple of hours.  Woke up.  Cried some more.  Drifted off for a couple more hours.  Woke up.  Cried.  Repeat.  But, we survived the night!  The first night is always the hardest, right?  And the little man gave me a huge smile when I picked him up from his crib this morning, so hopefully he won't need counseling in years to come because we abandoned him in his crib.  He is in his crib again tonight and hopefully it will involve fewer tears...from both of us.