I'm writing this as Mia is snoozing in her crib in her own room!!
For months Mia slept in a pack-n-play approximately 17 inches from where I slept. When she was teeny tiny and sleeping (or not sleeping) at random hours that was fine, but as she got bigger it started to turn into a pain. If we had anything we needed to do in our room (pack for a trip, put away laundry, clean, shower in the master bath or any other beauty things) it had to be done before 6pm. Especially tricky for Jeff since he didn't usually get home until 5:30 or later! At bedtime, Jeff and I would tiptoe into our room, hoping we would be able to find our pajamas and the bed in the dark and crossing our fingers every time we flushed the toilet.
The current recommendation is to keep your baby in your bedroom until she is anywhere from 6 months to a year old, and then to transition into her crib in her room. But that just wasn't working for us anymore! We talked to our pediatrician, who is actually a nationally-known baby sleep expert, who said there wasn't really a reason our baby needed to be in our room anymore. Since she was sleeping through the night we didn't need the convenience of her sleeping next to us, and we would all probably get a better night's sleep in separate rooms!
I will say that I probably would have kept Mia in our room for longer since it supposedly reduces the risk of SIDS, but we have an Owelet smart sock which gives us peace of mind knowing that she is alive and well throughout the night.
We were ready to move Mia downstairs to her room at 4 months, but we were about to head out on a trip and decided to wait until we got back. Then the dreaded 4 month sleep regression hit when we got home. Mia went from sleeping through the night every night to waking up a couple of times a night and needing to be fed every day around 4am. No bueno. That went on for a couple of weeks until we started introducing baby cereal, and it was lights out all night again. It was time.
Mia was just shy of 5 months old when we made the switch. To ease things, she'd been taking naps in her crib in her room basically since she was born, so she was already used to the space. We also added a white noise machine to the space and used blackout curtains to help her fall asleep on those late summer nights.
On the big night, she got into her sleep sack and nursed just like we always did upstairs, then we sang our goodnight song (not one you've heard of ha! - it's actually something my friends wrote for a Destination Imagination skit in high school hahaha). Then we closed the door to her room and crossed our fingers.
And she slept for 13 hours straight. 13 hours.
I know. It was incredible.
Jeff and I were joking that Mia was like, "Thank God Mom and Dad aren't keeping me up anymore!" And she kept sleeping 12 or 13 hours a night, every night. Since she's been sleeping in her room (for almost two months now!) I've gone down into her room three times in the middle of the night, and one of those nights it was when she had a temperature. That girl loves her little space, and we love having our room back.
Is there anything you did to help transition your baby into her own room? Let me know!
Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!
No comments :
Post a Comment