In my place

Over this past weekend we reached a big milestone. We hadn't planned to reach it this early, but our growing son gave us little choice. He has moved out of his Moses Basket and into his cot. And as there is not enough room for his cot in our bedroom, this means he has also moved into his own room.

We had noticed that particularly after his feed in the middle of the night he was not sleeping as long and could be heard banging against the side of his basket. So last Friday we moved into the nursery. Yes, we ALL moved into the nursery, for the night at least.

We all went to bed at the same time. We put the nursing pillow around and above his head so his new bed would not seem so huge. We put him into his cot and after a few more murmurings than usual he got the message that we were with him as usual and he went to sleep. We lay in bed a while longer then sneaked off downstairs with the baby monitor for an hour as it was still only about 9pm.

After an hour or so we went back up to bed in the nursery. We slept on the rather cramped (compared to our usual King Size) sofa bed with a futon mattress. In a reversal of our usual routine we fed him in our bedroom when he woke around 2am. After the feed he went back down to sleep without any problems.

In the morning we were there with him when he murmured and woke. He had slept until it started to get light, exactly as he normally did. Success!

On Saturday night Hayley and I moved back into our room and put the baby monitor into action during the night for the first time. Before he went to bed he drank a record 9 ounces of milk.

We put him to bed and headed off to our room with the baby monitor. He then slept for an unprecedented seven and a half hours!

Now you'd think this meant we got a good night's sleep. Not a chance! We were paranoid that the monitor wouldn't pick up his cries and that we wouldn't hear him. It was also a cold night - probably the coldest of the Autumn so far - and we spent much of it watching the temperature reading on the baby monitor, not to mention the two thermometers in his room, one of which had an alarm set if the temperature fell below 16C!

By the time he woke for a feed at around 3.30am we were more tired than usual. And the next morning when he woke as usual I was shattered. But it was a milestone reached and passed without half the problems I'd been worrying about. I'm a little sad to see his Moses Basket witting waiting to be put in the attic and I miss him murmuring in our room. But he's happy in his rrom and that's all that really matters.