A room of his own

Like all new mommies, I wanted Sam’s room to be PERFECT – totally complete and move-in ready – well

Sam Daneman enjoys his room

before he made his appearance. And, thanks to the hard work of (ever-so-patient) Daddy, it was PERFECT before Sam arrived in late April.

Well, last Friday (yes, September 17) marked the – wait for it… 2 WEEK anniversary of Sam sleeping in his very own room! I knew that he would be sleeping in our room for the first two to three months of his life for both safety and convenience. What I didn’t count on was that I wouldn’t WANT him to be in his own room for even longer after that. Sam’s room is the furthest room in the house from ours, so I really wanted him sleeping through the night before we made the Big Move. While we don’t live here, going from my room to Sam’s room does require navigating a set of stairs, typically with our dog weaving cat-like between your feet. Now, I’m a klutz anyway, so the idea of trying to navigate those stairs, with said feet-circling dog, in a sleep-deprived state, in a dark house, in the middle of the night not only wasn’t appealing, it was downright dangerous.

When we finally hit the sleeping-consistently-through-the-night point, and I was mentally ready to not have my sweet angel in the room with me all night, Sam made the Big Move. His first night went GREAT. He only woke up twice, once around midnight or 1 a.m. and again around 4:30 a.m. Both times he went right back to sleep after I retrieved a lost paci. “Sweet!” I smugly thought, “easy transition to his own room. Where’s all the drama I read about how hard it can be?” And then night two hit…HARD. After about 1,000 lost pacifier wakeups in roughly 10 minutes, I was a Bad Mommy. I gave up and brought Sam back into my room, where he slept soundly for the next 6+ hours.

Night three went a little better, and each night since then has steadily improved. Our typical schedule now is that when it’s time for the last feeding of the night, we go upstairs, lower the lights in the room, nurse and rock for a while, then, when he’s drowsy (if it’s a Good Mommy night; if it’s a Bad Mommy night, he’s already asleep) I lay him in the crib with the pacifier, pat his back a little bit (he’s become a side sleeper ever since he could roll that way on his own), and he’s zonked out in a few minutes. We usually have a lost pacifier fuss (often not even fully awake) early in the night – sometimes even before I’ve gone to bed – and then another lost paci, or sometimes an early-morning snack needed, sometime between 4 and 5 a.m. He goes right back to sleep after these things, and I’ve gotten surprisingly good at that treacherous walk from bedroom to nursery and back again. And the quality of sleep that I think we’re both getting, now that the Big Move has happened, makes us both happier campers in the morning.

And, perhaps most importantly, that PERFECT room that Daddy worked so hard on is finally getting real use!

Julie Daneman