Big Girl Bed

We have been fortunate in that Olivia has always been a good sleeper. Even as an infant she would sleep through the night. The only time we would run into trouble was if we put Olivia to bed too early. Doing so would cause multiple wake ups during the night. Typically Olivia goes to bed at 9 and sleeps until around 8:30-9:30 the next morning without waking. Of course there are times it doesn’t go so smoothly, like if a new tooth is coming in or she is sick, but in general this is our routine.

However, over the last month or so, Olivia has been fighting sleep more and more. She wants to stay up later and has a whole range of excuses to stay up, like “I’m thirsty,” “I’m hungry,” or “one more book.” Instead of our pleasant bedtime routine of reading books, prayers, lights off, we were having screaming and crying fits. Mark and I were exhausted and frustrated!

We knew something had to change. Mark decided it was time to teach Olivia to fall asleep on her own. I was hesitant. I really loved my night routine with Olivia-minus the last month-and it gave us more time together. I already feel like time is so limited since I have to work outside the home, I didn’t want to give up my night snuggle time. But I agreed that we needed to make some changes and establish healthy sleep habits.

Once we were in agreement of that, we had to figure out what route to go. Since Olivia was close to the age of moving into a toddler bed we didn’t want to train her to sleep by herself in a crib only to a month later do it all over again with a toddler bed.

So two weekends a go we converted Olivia’s crib to a toddler bed. For several days before this, we talked it up, telling her that she would get a big girl bed because she was a big girl. We let her pick out the twilight turtle that lights up her room with stars.  We practiced the routine with the baby doll and let Olivia put her baby to sleep in the bed. The first night she cried out for me a few times and cried for around 15-20 minutes. It was excruciating, but the second night it was for maybe 5 minutes. Now she knows the routine and rarely fusses. Right now we still need to be in the room for her to fall asleep but we are sitting in the chair across from her bed. The entire bedtime routine has been shortened significantly. We read two books and we ask her to close her eyes during the third book. She usually does that and after reading and prayers we put on soft lullaby music.

Olivia is so proud of herself the next morning. She either knocks on her door or jiggles it open (we are watching her on the monitor) and tells us “good nap.” She tells everyone she is a big girl and that “Livie sleep in  her big girl bed.”

I am vey pleasantly surprised how well the change in the bedtime routine is going, and very grateful to Mark for doing the “dirty work” in the beginning to establish the routine.

Mama and dada are very proud of our big girl!