We reached the sleep breaking point last Monday. I slept for 3 hours while R had M in the sling. He brought her to me at 2 AM, and as soon as she finished nursing she started kicking. And did not stop. Every few minutes there would be a kick and a writhe, and when I pushed her knees to her chest at 5 AM in a desperate attempt to help her pass gas, she peed and it ran out the back of her diaper into a puddle on my bed. I carried her to her room to change her and stood there sobbing. I could not go on like this. It was a physical impossibility. That night we started putting M in her crib.

M is not exactly happy about this development, and frankly, neither am I. I believe co-sleeping is good for her, and it obviously makes her feel safe and loved. But it is not working for us as a family … I’m not getting any sleep, and R has been banned to a different room. It saddens me that we can’t make this work for us, but we simply can’t.

I’ve been struggling for weeks (months?), trying to find a solution that would work for all of us and traumatize none of us. Unfortunately, I’m not sure one exists. I was still foundering, searching for a solution, when I arrived at the breaking point. So we didn’t start putting M in her crib necessarily because we thought it was the right solution, we did it because there were no other options – I physically could not keep her in my bed any longer. I dislike feeling like I’ve been forced into a certain action, but it is how I feel here.

So we have been proceeding with great ambivalence, but proceeding nonetheless. R is deployed at regular intervals to soothe her, because my greatest fear is that she’ll feel rejected and abandoned, or that we’re ignoring (and therefore dismissing) her feelings of anger and fear (at least that’s what I assume she’s feeling). I’ve spent my life feeling dismissed and invalidated by my parents, and I’m terrified of doing the same to M. My only comfort is that getting her to sleep is only one of many things we do in a 24 hour period. Not to mention that if I actually get some sleep, I may be a better parent during the rest of those 24 hours. I can only hope that if there are any negative effects to what we’re doing, they will be offset by the rest of our parenting.

In addition to my fears about how this will affect her, I’ve also had to deal with the loss I feel. Despite the difficulties of co-sleeping (including back and hip pain, being kept awake for hours on end by the kicking, and feeling like a straight-jacketed prisoner in my own bed), there were wonderful things too. M is not a very cuddly baby – she rarely leans on me or rests her head on my shoulder. But at night she pressed her body against me, and I could experience her incredible softness and warmth. The way she would root and latch on without opening her eyes or waking, and the obvious comfort she found from nursing would melt my heart, even as my body ached. This is particularly powerful for me, given the nursing difficulties we had in the beginning (which I have not yet covered here). And watching her wake up every morning was an act of pure bliss. She would stir for a while, moving her head from side to side. Then an arm would shoot up, her fingers slowly curling and uncurling. It would sink leisurely to her side, only to shoot up again, only to sink down again. Then she would open her eyes and tip her head back to look up at me, rewarding me with a huge grin that crinkled her eyes into new moons. I’ve cried over this loss – and the fear that I’m making a mistake – many times the last few days. But I proceed because having her in my bed for even just a few hours is a potent reminder of why we can’t continue that way.

And amongst all this fear and grief, there is also hope. This is how things went last night:

7:00 PM nurse
7:30 PM in crib
7:50 PM asleep
1:15 AM nurse and fall back asleep immediately
8:05 AM nurse and up for the day (with a big smile on her face)

Yes, you read that correctly. M slept for 12 hours, waking to nurse only once. I slept longer and deeper than I have in a very long time (although I still wake every 2-4 hours, from habit I suppose). We both got more sleep, and are both better rested. And she is showing no ill effects – happily playing and babbling and smiling like she does every day.

I know every night is different, and there’s no guarantee the rest of our nights will look like this – although that doesn’t stop me from hoping. As I lie in bed at night, comfortably wrapped around my body pillow, and able to toss and turn at will to ease the throbbing in my back and hips, I ponder the impossibility of perfection and the necessity of compromise. I am groping my way forward, uncertain that my choices are “right”. It’s a feeling I’m not comfortable with, but I’m sure will be faced with many times. In fact, I already know the next problem I get to agonize my way through: naps.