Aidan was a baby that needed contact to nap or sleep. He needed to feel the warmth of your body, and be able to hear your heartbeat at all times. Though we battled with this, we weren’t aware that anything was unusual about it, until other moms with bubs of a similar age, were transferring them to cots and all of our early attempts to do the same were unsuccessful.
Aidan spent his first months sleeping in a baby nest between Monty and I on the bed. It was propped up on towels to help to ease his silent reflux. One of us had a hand on him at all times. Aidan slept deeply but for short stints, and we slept in shifts to accommodate his erratic sleeping pattern, and get enough rest for ourselves.
When Aidan started to sleep more lightly, Monty had to move out of the main bedroom, because his snoring disturbed Aidan too much. And when he began to outgrown his baby nest, I popped the whole thing into a camp cot next to my bed. It was at this point that I took responsibility for the nights in full.
I was not able to keep a hand on him through the night any longer. So I trained myself to sleep so lightly, that I could get up the moment he stirred, and give him a bottle. He was still drinking them through the night – up to six or seven, depending on his quality of sleep. And if I got the bottle to him fast enough, he would stir, drink it, and go straight back to sleep. If I didn’t, he’d wake up properly, start crying, and need to be walked up and down the corridor before he fell back asleep on my shoulder. My nights became quite stressful, but I tried to prioritise Aidan’s sleep as far as possible.
Aidan was growing so tall so fast, that he outgrew the camp cot within a couple of months! He’d begun pulling himself up when he woke at night, and the risk of him toppling out was too much for my nerves… so we tried the cot again. This time around I outfitted the cot to promote the best night’s sleep possible, by propping a wedge pillow under the mattress, putting cot bumpers in so Aidan wouldn’t wake himself by rolling into the bars, and I also found a fabric privacy screen which prevented him from seeing me sleeping at a distance from him, rather than right next to him. This all worked really well for him, but I still had to jump up with a bottle the moment I heard him stir. Occasionally, if he was restless, I’d need to wedge a full-size pillow behind his back to give him a sense of someone being tucked in behind him.
Once the cot was successfully implemented into his nighttime routine, we began using it for Aidan’s naps too. We’d let him fall fast asleep in our arms and then transfer him to the cot once he was sleeping deeply. That transfer was a bit tricky, and had to be managed carefully, gently, and with a lot of patience, but it gave me such a sense of security knowing that I could go and get some things done while he napped, and that if he woke up, he would be safe within the cot, even if he stood up. The days of being trapped under a sleeping baby for two to three hours of an afternoon were finally over! Aidan loved his cot so much, that we were actually quite sad for him when our tall boy finally outgrew it at two years old! And when he did, a new era began for him and me: Co-sleeping on the bed together.
