Big Boy Bed

The story of Benson and his Big Boy Bed:

As I had mentioned earlier, Benson has had a really hard time sleeping ever since we moved into our new house. He was waking up at exactly 2:42 a.m. EVERY NIGHT!!! (trust me, I checked to make sure there wasn't a strange alarm going off)... He would wake up SCREAMING and as soon as I would get him out of his crib, he thought it was time to play! I would give him a bottle or rock him for hours, finally getting him back to sleep, but as soon as I laid him in his crib, he would wake up screaming again. And so we would go on a cycle: get him to sleep, lay him in his crib, wake up screaming, get him out of his crib, time to play, mom's going to pull her hair out.... And sadly, if we were still on this cycle at 5:00, I would just let him sleep between Casey and me. And, if he was sleeping in our bed, he was sleeping FINE!

This has been such a strange thing because Benson has slept through the night since he was 6 weeks old. So we didn't really know what to do. We tried letting him cry to sleep. It wasn't working for either of us. Usually he cried for over an hour (which meant that I cried for over an hour), and if he did go to sleep after that hour, he slept with his face against his crib, or would sleep for 15 minutes and wake up crying again. One time he cried so hard he threw up all over his crib, then all over me, then all over the kitchen floor.

So one night, we were going through our cycle of playing, sleeping, crying, pulling out hair, I had just put Benson to sleep for the 5th time and when I laid him in his crib, he woke up crying. So I laid his blanket out on the floor to wrap him up in it, and when I laid him on his blanket, he fell right asleep... ON THE FLOOR! And being the sleep deprived mother that I was, at 4 in the morning, I decided that since he was asleep, I wasn't going to bother him. So, that night, Benson slept on the floor-- until 10:30!!!!

The conclusion I came to was that Benson hates his crib. I don't know why, but I think that I would hate to sleep in a crib too. Maybe he's claustrophobic, who knows? The floor seemed to work nicely, but I couldn't let my baby sleep on the floor every night. So we got my old twin matress and put it on the floor in his room. He LOVES it!

He goes right to sleep on his big boy bed. If he ever does wake up in the night (rarely), I will go in and lay next to him on his bed and he'll hang on to me for a couple of minutes until he falls asleep. Once he falls asleep, he rolls over away from me and I get up and leave him there to sleep. He has fallen off his bed once or twice, but I put pillows next to the matress to soften his fall. And when he does make his way to the floor, he just stays asleep there. We put a gate at his door, and in the morning when he wakes up, he just goes to his gate, stands there, and yells for me to come get him.

I love our solution that we have found! I don't have to feel bad about him crying so hard he throws up, he doesn't need a bottle or to nurse to sleep, and he sleeps all night long again!

Here is a picture of Benson sleeping in his "Big Boy Bed". Benson is the blob up in the top left corner of the bed.

And here's just a cheesy picture I took of Benson. He's much happier when he sleeps at night.