I seem to have become a dirty hippie, when it comes to parenting anyway. The hippie part: cloth diapers, co-sleeping, babywearing. The dirty part: I don’t get to shower so much these days.
I had vague ideas about diapers and sleeping and such before Jack was born, but it’s not til I had the kid in my hot little hands that I really started deciding how I felt about these things. For example, I thought I would never have Jack sleep in our bed, not so much because I’m against it, but because I was afraid I’d squish him.
After spending many nights with hours awake trying to rock him back to sleep after nursing, I was finally exhausted enough just to haul him into bed with us, and voila! He fell asleep… and so did I. So now he spends part of the night in his cosleeper (which is attached to my side of the bed) and part of it in the bed. His sleep seems a lot calmer when he’s in the bed with us.. much quieter and less thrashing around.
If you subscribe to the Dr. Sears method of parenting, it’s all good. But a lot of people are wary of cosleeping because they say it doesn’t teach the baby independence–and that when you DO decide it’s time for them to move into their own room, good luck. We haven’t decided how long we want Jack to sleep in our room, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it I guess.
Today was a major milestone–the first time I took a shower when I was alone in the house with Jack. I’ve been having a hard time in the day getting him to nap unless I’m holding/wearing him. Every time I think he’s finally asleep and ease him into the crib or cosleeper or bed, bam, he’s wide awake and crying. But I kept trying this afternoon and eventually he fell asleep in the cosleeper and I rushed into the shower. I even had time to wash my hair, woo hoo!
