To ditch the crib or not to ditch the crib?


Since she was born, the kid has spent exactly one entire night sleeping in her crib.

Even before I got knocked-up I figured we'd do the co-sleeping thing for a while and then transition her to the crib. I planned to demand breastfeed and I'm a big fan of sleeping and staying warm so it seemed natural to keep her close at night. For the most part it's worked for us: at night she nurses to sleep with me and in the morning sleeps in with her Dad according to their rockstar schedules.

There was a time where I wasn't getting much sleep what with her majesty kicking me in the head and rocketing around the bed all night. So I started nursing her to sleep and then moving her to the crib. That technique worked with minimal fussing for a few weeks. She'd sleep for a few hours, wake up demanding a nosh so I'd stagger across the hall and bring her back to bed with us. I tried staying up and nursing her in a chair a few times but hated it. I was pretty happy with having her start out in the crib and then spend the rest of the night with us.

And then she started losing her ever-loving shit when I'd go to move her to the crib after she'd fallen asleep. She'd be all sweetly passed-out and then the second I'd put her down she'd practically levitate back out with rage. In her mind apparently: crib = evil tool of infant torture. I even tried putting a pillow from our bed in there thinking that maybe it was a scent/comfort thing. She was having none of it. I made half-hearted attempts at letting her cry it out but ultimately, at 10-11pm at night, I was just too damned tired to stay up listening to that racket until she knocked herself out.

Now, most of the time it's really not a big deal. She doesn't kick me in the head anymore and I sleep better knowing she's warm and safe with us. But occasionally it would be nice if Mommy and Daddy didn't have to get creative with locations to have Special Happy Adult Fun Time. And on the nights the husband is out late, I sometimes really miss having the bed to myself to sleep all stretched out like in the good old days.

So we've been thinking about packing the crib away and getting a single bed to replace it. The idea being that way I could nurse her to sleep and then stealth my way back to my own bed. While part of my brain thinks I'm being especially clever and cunning, another part of my brain that is slowly catching on to how Life with Kids works thinks that I'm fooling myself: she'll figure this one out in a week and we'll simply have bought another piece of furniture that acts mainly as stuffed animal storage.