Sleeping Arrangements

We broke Luca. We broke him because we got greedy. Here he was, content to wake up once a night, pound a bottle, and then immediately go back to sleep. Because any more would be un-Luca-like.

But nooooooo. We couldn’t just let him wake up once a night. We wanted the whole night. 8, 10, 12 hours wasn’t good enough for us, The Super Parents. So we started messing with the system. We took away his pacifier. We started changing his bedtime. We started denying bottles late night.

And then he got broken.

Luca now wakes up five times a night. He flops around and shrieks like a banshee. And when you go over to him at 2, 3, 4, 4:30 am, he simply looks up and smiles the greatest smile ever. “Oh, a bottle? No thank you. I just wanted you to wake up and cross the room to look at me so I can give you this winning smile. Your welcome.”

Over the weekend we got to a panic state. And by “we” I mean “Diana Hamann.” She officially had it with our happy night owl. And we are implementing the “Cry it out” method.

It’s controversial, but it worked for Elijah. You basically let the little guy cry until he learns to comfort himself. You let him go until the edge of hysteria. The only bummer is it can take a few days of crying. Which is noisy.

So we moved him to Eli’s room so he can deal with it.

Actually, we set up his crib in Eli’s room because he’s going eventually have to sleep there. And it made more sense to get him used to a new room plus a new sleep schedule at the same time rather than go through trauma twice.

We spent the while day playing it up with Eli. “Oooh. You have a room mate now! This is soo fun. Your little brother and you get to share a room! Yay!”

At bedtime, we made it as fun as possible. We played music. We read books. We kept pointing at Luca and saying how great it was he was with us.

Elijah seemed to get into it. But when Diana turned off the lights and kissed Eli goodnight, he said, “Mom? Take Luca with you.”

To add insult to injury, we both separately whispered to Eli over the course of the day, “You know Eli, if Luca cries too much you can sleep in our room.”

I’d like to go on record now as saying that was the biggest mistake of our parenting lives.

Sure enough, at 9pm Luca started squawking. Eli immediately cashed in his chips and bee-lined to our once two person bed. Then at bedtime, Diana decided to sleep in Eli’s room so she could comfort Luca in the middle of the night.

So, to recap. We moved Luca to Eli’s room, Eli to our room, and Diana to Eli’s room. So we can all get to a normal sleeping arrangement.