After bath time on Sunday night, I got Jacob dried and dressed into his PJs and said ‘Ok into bed for story time’. Without saying a word, the pair of us trundled off and settled down.. in my room.
We have been up and down with our efforts to get Jacob to sleep into his own bed at night; at our best, he starts out in his room and sneaks into ours at some point during the night. When our attempts are average, we start out in his bed and give up after an hour and a half of his negotiating, bargaining and arguing and just let him go to sleep in our room to get it over and done with. At our worst, we bypass the initial drama and let him get into our bed from the very start, which I just realised I have been doing for about the last month.
Ass Monkey and I are painfully aware that we have made a balls of this from the beginning. When Jacob was one and started creche, he got a really bad infection and fever, and as first-time parents, we of course panicked. I was worried about him being in his cot and sick alone, and so brought him into our bed. That took time to undo. Then he had those awful night terrors from one-and-a-half until he was three and was so devastated when he woke up from them, that he would cling to me and I brought him into our bed then too.
He is currently neither sick nor suffering from night terrors but is now so accustomed to sleeping with us in our bed that he tells me he’s ‘lonely’ when he’s on his own in his room, and that there is ‘nobody to mind him’. He also smooches up to me and tells me how ‘warm’ I am and that his room is ‘so, so cold’. During some of his greater dramatic moments, he lies down on the landing floor, rigid and refusing to move to his room and protesting, ‘But I don’t have a TELLY in my room!’ (wtf?!)
I KNOW he is playing me on those dramatic aspects but I also believe him about being lonely. He’s not used to being on his own, he’s used to having company in the bed beside him at night since he was one. And the thing is, I really don’t mind him being there, but Ass Monkey bears the brunt of having the duvet pulled off him and for some unknown reason is the only one receiving a four-year-old foot in the face. Maybe Jacob wants him to get his own room..
Jacob’s younger sister Eva is one and a half and hasn’t spent one single solitary moment in our bed. Aside from the fact that there’s NO ROOM, we’ve learnt our lessons with Jacob and his bedtime routine (or lack thereof) and vow not to repeat it with the second child. I’m totally into the idea of siblings sharing rooms and think I’ll move Eva into his room with him when she’s out of her cot.
In the meantime, Jacob has promised that he’ll stay in his bed all night ‘when he’s five’. So, just another year to go then.. zzzzzzz….
