by Paul Davison

Photo by: Carla Peroni

When Lauren got pregnant, we made the decision early on that when Isabel was born, we would practice attachment parenting. You can read all about my take on AP in one of my previous posts here, but the bottom line of the concept involves trying as much as possible to ease the separation between child and parent, thereby creating a more loving and nurturing atmosphere for growth and a more confident child. What that translates into as far as everyday life goes is a lot of carrying in slings and wraps, and perhaps most significantly, the child sleeping with mommy and daddy in the family bed. We feel we were pretty successful for the most part on those goals but realized we had a challenge on our hands when we were ready for the little one to be out of our bed at night, so we could attempt to restore a semblance of the whole “man and wife” thing.

Perhaps in part because we were practicing AP, our daughter never took to the crib. This also might be due to her natural personality as well, who knows, but bottom line – the crib was more of an ornament than an actual sleeping device. Anytime she fell asleep in our arms, the stroller, or the car and we tried to move her into the crib, she would suddenly awake the moment she was lowered within the confines of the barred enclosure. It wasn’t long before we stopped trying and resigned ourselves to the idea that she might be in bed with us for a long while.

Fortunately my wife had the brilliant idea of taking down the crib and opening up a futon that we had in her room in case guests spent the night. We converted the futon for permanent use into a double bed making sure to push it into the walls so it was protected on two sides. On the floor along the long edge of the bed, we placed an enormous six foot long stuffed caterpillar that was a gift from her grandmother (and something I initially hoped would make its way to the Parent Swap listings) and ultimately served a useful purpose as a giant cushion in case the little one took a header out of her bed.

She was 14 months old, and we had made the decision to start putting her down in her new “Big Girl Bed.” She really liked her new bed because it was pretty and girly and decorated with beautiful pillows and about a dozen stuff animals. We made the point of spending time in her room during the daytime, pointing out how pretty the bed was and encouraging her to sit on it and read her books.

Prior to the decision to move into the Big Girl Bed, my wife would nurse her to sleep in our bed, and if she had any energy, eventually get back up and do whatever we had planned for that evening. This was tough and unsustainable, as we could not enter our own bedroom, save to go asleep ourselves, past 8 o’clock, for fear of waking up the munchkin.

For the first couple of weeks, the basic pattern was the same, except the location had shifted to her room. My wife would nurse her to sleep and then leave the room. Of course this was the plan on paper only. In actuality, it would sometimes take a while for her to fall asleep and the common side effect of this was that Lauren would fall asleep too, very often for the entire night. This was difficult considering we were trying to start OrganicGreenMommy, which often meant working late into the evenings. This method netted Lauren perhaps less sleep than when our daughter was an infant, as she would often wake up in the middle of the night for more nursing, causing Lauren to stumble down the hall at 2am to satisfy her.

So we hatched a new idea. Since I was waking up pretty early in the morning anyway we figured it would be a better idea for me to put her down and take all responsibility for her during the twilight hours. So from now on, I would put the little one to sleep at night in her bed. If she woke up in the middle of the night, I was responsible for soothing her back to sleep, up until 5 am. Anytime she woke up after 5 am, I would bring the little one into our bed for her morning nursing with Lauren. The two of them would usually sleep on and off from 5 am until 7 or 8 am, upon which time they would get up for the day.

This plan served several functions:

• One, it provided Lauren the opportunity for more time in the evenings to catch up on the website, and better sleep at night.

• Two, it offered the opportunity for special “Daddy Time” before bed, in which I would take care of all of the hygiene stuff as well as read her the bedtime story.

• We also got that special time after the lights were off and it also positioned me to be the nurturer in the middle of the night in case she woke up crying.

• Finally, it began the process of easing her into her own bed and gradually cutting down on the nursing as we were slowly transitioning her into eating “Big Girl” food.

Now, this is not to say we weren’t without a few bumps in the early going. For the first week or so, our daughter was beside herself with upset and anger that mommy wasn’t putting her to bed anymore. I felt awful lying next to her as she cried herself to sleep, but I felt confident knowing I was there next to her to rub her back and whisper in her ear that everything was going to be okay. A far cry from throwing her in a crib and shutting the door and letting her cry herself to sleep a la the Ferber Method. On about the fourth night, she realized that this was the reality she had to face. From that night on, she never cried again and happily went to bed with me.

Sometimes I would fall asleep with her myself (and therefore defeated the purpose in some ways, as Lauren and I still weren’t getting time alone in our bed) but this was okay, considering my early wakeup time and the fact that Lauren was staying up late most nights anyway working on the website. Often, Lauren would come in the room after an hour or so and wake me up, so we still were able to get time together in our bed when we wanted to.

We’ve been going strong with this method for about 8 months, but now we’ve begun a new step: leaving the room before she is asleep. We don’t do it 100% of the time, but now, very often, I will lie with her for 10 or 20 minutes and if she’s not asleep, simply whisper in her ear: “Now you’re going to go to sleep like a big girl, okay, all by yourself,” and gently walk out the room, shut the door, and not see her until the next morning.

In a future post, I will get into more specifics on this next step, which we believe is a huge accomplishment for an Attachment Parented kid: getting to sleep all by herself in her “Big Girl Bed” at the age of 22 months.

Have a comment, question, or idea for a post? Email Paul at paul@organicgreendaddy.com.

In addition to founding www.OrganicGreenDaddy.com, Paul maintains a blog over at www.monkeyinmymind.com, commenting on politics, sports, film, and whatever else his Monkey has in store for him.

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