When Mike & I found out about our greatest accomplishment (maybe even our only accomplishment thus far!) we were surprised to say the least. I was suddenly thrown head first into the vast unknown of parenting books, baby supplies, questions and more questions. What to eat while pregnant, what to buy for our lil miss, diapers, birthing strategies, immunizations, OH MY!!!
While I was pregnant Mike & I spent more hours than I can count, & probably more hours than Mike cares to remember making the important decisions on all things baby. From car seats to doctors-then midwifes and more. I thought we were oh so prepared for the most unplanned pregnancy of all time. Well boy was I wrong! We survived the first few months by the hair of our chinny chin chin to say the least, doing whatever it took to keep our spawn happy & content. By around 5 months I realized everything we were doing as parents was in line with a specific parenting technique labeled Attached Parenting.
We had heard of attached parenting before & I had even read a little bit about it while pregnant but stopped once I read the words cosleeping. I am 100% against any type of "sleep training" method out there but if there was one thing Mike & I were not going to do it was sleep with our baby. One has to draw the line somewhere right? Well my first mistake here was assuming I had any idea of what life would be like with a baby when I was pregnant. I think we lasted about one and a half nights with her in the bassinet next to the bed before we "gave in" after getting up constantly and started co-sleeping. Sleep is very dear to me and I was not about to be the zombie mom who was up all hours of the night nursing & rocking a crying baby. With Odesa in the bed everything was easy & right, she slept better, I slept better & nursing was a breeze. Fast forward 12 months and here I am a zombie mom! If you haven't yet met Odesa (shame on you!) then what you don't know is that she is a tiny person with a BIG personality. She knows what she needs & how to get it! Well our co-sleeping situation has turned into the all night diner under moms shirt! Due to some breastfeeding woes- more on that later, Odesa has become accustomed to eating at her favorite restaurant 7-10 times a night! Needless to say neither Mike or myself are sleeping much these nights. So now we are forced to make some real decisions regarding our daughter & our parenting style as we move forward into the world of night weaning. The road wont be an easy one, and I am sure things will get much harder before they get easier. We found a plan where you slowly introduce other ways to put them back to sleep instead of nursing. Hopefully restful nights are somewhere in our future!
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