Getting Real with Kira Hazledine
I took one side off Hallie’s crib to magically and seamlessly transform the baby jail into a toddler bed. Hooray! What a milestone, right? I was left feeling unimpressed though. Honestly, Hallie rarely slept in her crib anyways, with the amount of bed-sharing that happened thanks to a breastfed baby that woke me up too much. I was tired, ok? Bed-sharing worked, until it didn’t. So we were making the leap to have our daughter sleep in her own bed. But looking at this small crib mattress, I knew there was no way in hell Hallie would actually stay in this bed.
Surprise! She didn’t. Hallie was constantly smooshing herself against the crib rails and getting irritated when she would roll one way or another and get caught. The kid does some damage in her sleep, and I’ve never seen a small child move so much. I thought about a twin bed and how that might help her, and then remembered that my parents had an extra queen mattress. Well… if it’s just laying around, why would I buy a different one?
I made a really big deal about Hallie’s big girl bed, and she could not get enough of this huge space just for her. Hallie can sleep any direction that she wants, tossing and turning as much as she needs to without bumping a person or crib rail. Unfortunately, this is where we ran into a problem. Hallie was no longer bumping into a person. This is not uncommon for small children. It’s where we get adorable pictures of parents asleep in the crib with their kids, in a desperate attempt to get some decent sleep for everyone.
The difference here, is it’s a queen bed. Hell yeah. My husband or myself can slide right into bed with Hallie and still get a decent night’s sleep if she’s having a tough time. And guess what? They make queen-sized sheets for night-time bed wetting. Brilliant. It’s a win for everyone, and my husband and I have both fallen asleep with our daughter in attempts to put her down for the night. We will sleep next to each other again eventually. Right now, we are in the trenches of sleep-training, and that’s ok.
It’s not perfect yet. One of us still sleeps with her pretty regularly. In our defense, we were night-weaning too. That takes some effort. Now that she’s off the good stuff at night, the next step is to encourage the gremlin to sleep alone. We are sort of ready for it, but with another baby coming, we need at least one of them to sleep somewhat independently. We are getting there, and Hallie will sleep alone soon enough. But the queen size bed has made all of this a hell of a lot easier. And when it comes to parenting hacks, this has by far been my favorite.
