Not So By the Book

Last week we reached a new milestone. Ava slept in her crib for the first time at bedtime. I’m sure that leads you to one question- where has she been sleeping up until then? Right in the middle of mommy and daddy- where else would she sleep? I have to admit Justin and I both swore we were never going to let our kids sleep in our bed but that theory and pretty much every other theory we had on how we were going to parent a newborn went out the door the minute she arrived. While I was pregnant I bought this book called The Baby Whisperer and read it cover to cover. I even made Justin read what I had highlighted and would explain to him exactly how everything was going to work. We had a plan and we were going to stick to it. There were many things I said I would never do. I am such a planner and a routine sort of person so naturally I believed I would incorporate that into my parenting style. Boy I had no idea! We have pretty much done the opposite of everything I read and planned for and truth be told I don’t regret it at all. We let her sleep in the bed with us, I pretty much feed her whenever she wants to eat, we don’t have any kind of napping routine and really haven’t even tried to put one in place. The even stranger thing is if either of us has stuck to any sort of routine it has been Justin not me and he is the laid back one at our house that doesn’t require any sort of routine for himself. So one night last week I was so exhausted that he took her after I fed her so I could go to bed early. A couple of hours later I woke up to him getting in the bed but she wasn’t with him. He said he had put her in her crib and she was asleep. I was a little sad at first and part of me wanted to go rescue her from that cold, lonely crib (at least this is how I envisioned it felt to her). He reassured me that she was asleep though and was fine so I refrained and went back to sleep. I woke up about 4am to her fussing a little and practically ran to the crib to get her. After having those hours of sleep without her beside me and realizing how much more deeply I slept and that she was just fine and had actually slept for a longer stretch of time in the crib than she normally would in our bed I realized it was probably better for both of us if she started sleeping in the crib. Of course every night still I am so tempted to just put her in bed with me and we haven’t worked our way up to sleeping apart all night. When she wakes up to eat I just go ahead and bring her into our bed but at least we are taking baby steps. All this being said what I’m really trying to say is that being a new mother has made me realize I don’t know myself as well as I think I do and I am more capable of being a go with the flow person than I thought I was and I actually enjoy that I get to incorporate some of that in my life instead of always being so by the book like I used to be. I also have seen that Justin is more capable of being structured and sticking with a plan than I thought he was. Parenthood has definitely been an opportunity for both of us to grow and develop new traits already and I know this is only the beginning and we will continue to learn more about ourselves over the next 18+ years.