Sleeping With Two Small Children

I would’ve thought my sleep issues would be long gone by now.  I mean, my kids are four and two years old.  Don’t most people only deal with sleepless nights when they have infants? 

 

So why in the heck do my kids wake up more times a night than a newborn baby?  And they don’t go back to sleep nearly as easily either.   Why am I being punished?

 

I always thought I would never be one of those parents whose children slept in the bed with them.  As babies, both our little guys slept in their own cribs.  I always secretly smiled on the inside when I heard mom’s talking about the struggle of getting their babies to start sleeping in their own beds.

 

I had overcome that hurdle.  Well, really at that time I had never even encountered the hurdle.  My children slept in their own rooms.  Always had, always would.  And I was proud.

 

But, then our oldest child turned three, developed nighttime fears of some sort, and began begging to sleep with us.  Because he was “scared”.  Give me a break.

 

And so it began. 

 

By four years old, we were carrying his limp, sleeping body from his own bedroom to our bedroom when it was time for us to go to sleep.  We have concluded that it is just easier this way.  If we bring him into our room, he stays asleep and then sleeps through the night.

 

If we don’t, he comes barreling through our door sometime in the middle of the night usually awake enough that he’s either talking, crying, or begging for a drink or snack.  And believe me, it’s torture trying to get him to go back to sleep.

 

So, we had our little nighttime routine down and really I didn’t mind it all that bad. Plus, our child sleeps almost on top of my husband, so for me it’s practically like he’s not even there.

 

But then, our little sleeping world was rocked once again. 

 

My husband and I did a completely ignorant thing a couple of months ago.  We took the crib out of our two-year old son’s room.  And the number one reason this action qualifies as “ignorant” is because the kid wasn’t even climbing out of the crib. 

 

Nope, he was pretty content in the darn thing. It was US who decided it was time to move on.  It was US who decided that we were ready to get the crib out of his room. 

 

As my husband carried the pieces of the baby crib up to rest in the dusty attic, he also carried up our last remaining chances of uninterrupted sleep.  

 

And at point all heck broke loose.

 

Why did we do this?  What was wrong with the crib?  Besides the fact that it was covered in baby bite marks and smelled mysteriously of curdled milk, even though it had been cleaned a million times. 

 

Okay, it hadn’t.  But I had sort of wiped it down a time or two.

 

Our two-year old has figured out that his big brother sleeps in our bed and understandably he feels that he should get to as well.  And I guess technically he should, if we’re being totally fair and all. 

 

So, now he is the one barreling in at all hours of the night, begging for a drink, and keeping me from ever getting a good night’s rest. 

 

Ever again

 

And a good parent, who understood that this was a vital learning experience for the newly-toddler-bed-sleeping son, probably would’ve told the child no and sent him back to his bed. 

 

Because we don’t just get up in the middle of the night anytime we want.  Even if we convince ourselves we think we’re dying of thirst.

 

Night time is for sleeping.  And sleeping only.

 

But I guess I’m not a good parent.  I’m more of a sleep-deprived parent.  And if dragging myself out of bed to fill his sippy cup with apple juice will get me back to sleep any faster—then that’s what I’m doing. 

 

I can’t lie.  I also can’t be held accountable for my parental actions at 2:00 am. 

 

But, even after my two-year old finally goes to sleep, I still can’t get any rest.  I mean, for some reason he pushes me to the edge of the bed every night.  I don’t know how his thirty-four pound chubby body can press my—ahem—“a little more” pound body to the edge. 

 

It’s beyond me.

 

It’s like when he’s sleeping he becomes this immovable statue.  Like Thor’s hammer or something.  I try to scoot him. He doesn’t budge.  I try to roll him.  He doesn’t budge.  Sometimes I even try to pick him up and move him.

 

Oh, he budges when I do this, but he also gets angry and starts crying and then I regret ever having tried to move him. 

 

And within seconds, he has me pushed to the edge once again.  It sucks.  I mean, we have a king size bed and I am forced to sleep on a space about the width of a yard stick.  And I am much more than the width of a yard stick. 

 

Maybe I should just go sleep in his toddler bed.  At least then I would have more space. 

 

You know, these kids really have no right to be running the show around here.  They don’t work.  They don’t pay the bills.  They really don’t contribute to this household in any way whatsoever.

 

Yet, they get exactly what they want.  They get every room in our house.  And just so we’re clear, it’s not our house.  It’s not been our house since they exited the womb.  It’s theirs.  We just rent the space, take care of the space, and pay for everything that’s in it. 

 

They’re simply the landlords.  A position in which they have done nothing to earn, mind you.  But inevitably it’s theirs. 

 

And they suck.