I've been reading forum posts by people talking about sleep issues with their kids and kind of just, I don't know, reflecting on how we have (so far) managed sleeping arrangements with our children. We have a three bedroom house. By some standards, that's tiny. By other standards...that's luxury. It depends on who you're talking to, I guess (even in the US!). Anyway, there are four of us total and no one else living with us presently...and we all sleep in the same bedroom. :-P We just ordered furniture and are finally getting our house semi-organized, so I'll post pictures eventually, but we pretty much opted to do what worked best for us and seemed most likely to allow us to care for our babies while losing as little sleep as possible.
Our master bedroom is huge...well, again, depending on whose standards you use. But it's the size of our living room. One side of the room has our bed and a night stand...and that's half of the bedroom (with plenty more room at the foot of the bed). The other half has a dresser, a pack and play (which ends up filling up with laundry since no one actually sleeps in it :-P), and a toddler bed. If you picture our bedroom like a rectangle, all the furniture I mentioned is just running along the long side of it, with more furniture at the bottom - my desk, filing drawers, and a big chair I can sleep in while cradling my baby in a Boppy if she won't sleep on her own for some reason.
Anyway, Felicity sleeps in the toddler bed and has since a week after Mary was born. We had contemplated having both of them in our queen sized bed...but a week of barely sleeping due to fear of one falling off or smothering the other (or both) made Josh and me quite aware that we needed to figure out a way we could relax and sleep. :-P So poor Felicity, at almost eighteen months, got the boot. And, yes, it's poor Felicity. She was still nursing a lot at night, sleeping right next to me, and I remember that night as I was in labor with Mary...every time I rolled over to move Felicity to nurse on a different side, I'd have an insanely strong contraction. In fact, pretty much any time I moved at all...so it was a big contrast for her to have my undivided attention/free access to nursing at will all night and then get moved to her own bed. We had tried getting her to sleep in her own bed, but I guess at that point we just did what netted us more sleep and that was to keep her in bed with us.
After a week of both of us getting little to no sleep, Josh made the decision that Felicity needed to learn to sleep in her toddler bed. I fully agreed. And he started the process. It was a bit sad, but nursing was still part of the bedtime routine (and I still got up two or three times per night to nurse her whenever she woke up, too) and we simply sat with her till she fell asleep in her own bed. She cried a lot the first night or two, maybe even the first several nights. But she finally decided that she loved her bed and now she doesn't even like us to sit on it or to have Mary climb into it (when it's bedtime). In fact, we're just now starting to have her sleep in her bed for naptime as well and she seems to be acclimating to that quite beautifully. (I weaned Felicity from nursing during the night a few months after Mary was born; I figured we'd both sleep better, but that took a few nights of me waking up with her and just holding her a long time while offering her drinks and food if she wanted - I wasn't trying to starve her, but she really wasn't hungry or thirsty.)
Mary sleeps with us. She's thirteen months old and I'm not quite sure what we're going to do next. Since we have no real deadline, I'm thinking she's going to move into her own bed as soon as the weather warms up a bit. But on the other hand I might wait till we night wean her. I know Josh is eager to have our bed back, but I'm actually a little concerned about the process of weaning myself off of having a tiny little teddy bear to cuddle all night. LOL! I'm sure I'll adjust.
So yeah...those are the sleeping arrangements. We have a playroom as well that has a fully-functional and beautifully adorned white crib in it. :-P Felicity slept in it a couple times, I think, for a couple of really short naps or something. I think I'm just really not a crib person. Honestly, while some people are terrified at the thought of overlaying their babies due to co-sleeping, I sleep better knowing my babies are not smothering to death or getting stuck in crib rails, etc. I can feel them breathing, feel their warmth. And with Felicity nearby in her toddler bed, I can hear her breathing at night if I listen closely, so I am able to keep close tabs on both my kids. Felicity woke up crying a couple times last night (I'm not sure why; the first time she was feeling sick to her stomach and was shaking) and it was nice to be able to hear her and go to her immediately (I'm a fairly light sleeper, I guess).
The playroom is going to turn into a bedroom for the girls fairly soon, but I'm definitely enjoying this period of time in our lives where our whole family all sleeps in the same room. When we have guests, it's super convenient, because we can just retreat from the rest of the house (since we have a bathroom in here too). I feel like everything will change when the girls start sleeping in a different room. I doubt I'll worry about them as much, but I suppose I probably will check on them occasionally.
The third bedroom is going to be a guest room. Or one of my siblings will rent it from us eventually, as one of them did for a few years already. :-) Who knows? In any case, we'll have it decently furnished within the next couple weeks and then I'll post pictures. I'm pretty excited that our house is actually going to look like we care about it finally.
And now Mary is awake...
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