The Big Boy Bed

Tonight is Henry's 5th night sleeping in his big bed. Honestly, it's going much better than I expected or imagined, but it's not perfect yet. After the first night (last Thursday) I was in tears. It took Henry almost 2 hours to fall asleep and then after he woke up once at 3am he didn't fall asleep again until almost 6am. It was a long and draining night; however, it was definitely mostly our faults for not knowing what to do or what we were doing. Instead of laying Henry down like we always do after reading a few books and praying, we stayed in there with him and lay next to or on the bed with him. Patrick and I were both just thinking that he would need that since he wasn't used to this new bed and new room. Instead of it being a comfort, I think Henry thought it was a blast and he played for some of those hours. Sometimes I would have to laugh because he kept lifting up the sheet and peeking down the bed and he was also loving to scratch the mesh in the bed rail. Needless to say, that was a discouraging night and I wondered if we were ever going to be able to make the transition. (I know my thinking was a little off since it was only the first night, but I wasn't really seeing the big picture!)

So the next day Patrick and I were building up what a big boy he was for sleeping in his big boy bed and we mentioned that bed any chance we could. So for his nap when we went upstairs he went straight into his new room and climbed into bed willingly ( I was sort of surprised). I decided just to try our normal routine of reading, praying and then leaving the room just to see what would happen. As soon as I left the room he started to get out of bed, but I was watching and walked right back in and tucked him in again and reminded him that we stay in our bed for nigh-night time and then I walked out again. This time he stayed and he ended up sleeping for 3 hours in there! I was so excited. So for every bedtime and nap that's what we've done and it's worked. He stays in bed when we lay him down and goes to sleep, which is so exciting. I really pictured him to be a runner and thought he'd try to escape every time we lay him down.

We're still working on it though...every night for the past 4 nights he has woken up in the middle of the night and opened his door and called to us. (We have a safety gate up across the door) Friday night he woke up at midnight and when Patrick went in there Henry looked at him and said, "I want Barney"! But really it's not funny to have to be waking up every night in the middle of the night so we're trying to figure out how to handle that next. We're both getting tired and wanting a full night's sleep---while we still can. So any suggestions with how to get him to stay in there and fall back to sleep without help from us (as I'm sure he did in his crib many times) are welcome. Other than that I'm really thankful that he's made the transition pretty easily. I feel really relieved to be doing it and not have to worry about what's going to happen anymore. At least now I know what's going to happen and we can work on that next...