My apologies if this gets a little long.
I'm 36 weeks pregnant and recently had a pretty bad health scare (head cold, then flu, then pneumonia with septicemia) and ended up in the hospital. Long story short, I'm slowly getting better (baby seems to be thriving, thank goodness), but sleeping has been a bit of a nightmare between the coughing and not being able to get comfortable, so my partner has been sleeping on the couch and dealing with our 19 month old daughter if she wakes in the night. Or at least that was the plan.
She has been sleeping in a twin size mattress (on the floor) since 6 months old, so if we have to co-sleep with her in her room (if she's sick, teething, etc), we can. Although we try to make it so that we can leave just before she falls asleep so she doesn't always rely on us to be there for her. A normal night (if she were to wake up) would consist of one of us going to comfort her, then returning back to our bed for the rest of the night. Sometimes we'd fall asleep with her, but we would try to leave before she's completely out. Whichever we did, we always made sure that she was feeling safe and secure when we'd leave her room. If she fussed about wanting us to stay, we would. Otherwise we would say our goodnights, and leave her to sleep.
Now she will NOT lay down if we're not beside her, and worse than that, she often won't lay down at all. He will lay in her bed and fall asleep while she plays, and when she is ready, she will come lay beside him and fall asleep herself. She's also been completely off naps for easily a month now, which makes for easier nights, but a much more tired mama during the day. If she DOES need a nap now, it's never without a fight (that she ends up winning, simply because I don't have the energy to convince her that she's tired and needs to sleep).
Another possibly bigger problem I'm having is that he now wants to bring the spare bed (a queen) upstairs to replace the one she's sleeping on now, so he can sleep more comfortably. While I would generally not have a problem with this, I can see that our daughter has taken several steps backwards from being comfortable falling asleep on her own, to being dependent on us being there for her to not only fall asleep, and fall BACK to sleep when she wakes in the middle of the night. Walking into her room used to be all it took for her to lay herself back down, but now we have to stay until she's asleep.
We also don't have a crib and I plan to keep the baby in our room (either in our bed or in a side sleeper) for at least the first few months, so he plans to co-sleep with her until the baby is settled into his own sleep routine.
I feel not so good about a few things.
1. He's completely changed her sleep routine to one where she felt secure to sleep on her own to being dependent on us to sleep beside her. Like I said, we would co-sleep when need be, but she never relied on us to be next to her the way she does now.
2. He's changing the family dynamics by sleeping with her in her room, while I sleep with the baby in ours. This bothers me quite a bit since there's no family bed here. It's him and her in her room, and baby and I in ours.
3. He's changing up her room by swapping beds, and plans on changing it back once we all move back to our regular sleeping schedules (parents in our room, kids in theirs, etc).
I've offered to take over and give him the bedroom, but he's insisting that the bed will be moved this weekend. End of story.
Can someone please give me a little advice on how I should be handling this? One part of me is happy to have a partner so willing to help, but I foresee some serious problems once the baby is born.
Last night I got so mad that I stormed out and bought a new guest bed (a BYO camping bed). I told him where I was going, but he's still unaware that I bought a new bed (which btw, we really can't afford). But my parents are coming to visit and they need something to sleep on.
Ugh. Am I overreacting? Any advice on how I could handle this?
I'm 36 weeks pregnant and recently had a pretty bad health scare (head cold, then flu, then pneumonia with septicemia) and ended up in the hospital. Long story short, I'm slowly getting better (baby seems to be thriving, thank goodness), but sleeping has been a bit of a nightmare between the coughing and not being able to get comfortable, so my partner has been sleeping on the couch and dealing with our 19 month old daughter if she wakes in the night. Or at least that was the plan.
She has been sleeping in a twin size mattress (on the floor) since 6 months old, so if we have to co-sleep with her in her room (if she's sick, teething, etc), we can. Although we try to make it so that we can leave just before she falls asleep so she doesn't always rely on us to be there for her. A normal night (if she were to wake up) would consist of one of us going to comfort her, then returning back to our bed for the rest of the night. Sometimes we'd fall asleep with her, but we would try to leave before she's completely out. Whichever we did, we always made sure that she was feeling safe and secure when we'd leave her room. If she fussed about wanting us to stay, we would. Otherwise we would say our goodnights, and leave her to sleep.
Now she will NOT lay down if we're not beside her, and worse than that, she often won't lay down at all. He will lay in her bed and fall asleep while she plays, and when she is ready, she will come lay beside him and fall asleep herself. She's also been completely off naps for easily a month now, which makes for easier nights, but a much more tired mama during the day. If she DOES need a nap now, it's never without a fight (that she ends up winning, simply because I don't have the energy to convince her that she's tired and needs to sleep).
Another possibly bigger problem I'm having is that he now wants to bring the spare bed (a queen) upstairs to replace the one she's sleeping on now, so he can sleep more comfortably. While I would generally not have a problem with this, I can see that our daughter has taken several steps backwards from being comfortable falling asleep on her own, to being dependent on us being there for her to not only fall asleep, and fall BACK to sleep when she wakes in the middle of the night. Walking into her room used to be all it took for her to lay herself back down, but now we have to stay until she's asleep.
We also don't have a crib and I plan to keep the baby in our room (either in our bed or in a side sleeper) for at least the first few months, so he plans to co-sleep with her until the baby is settled into his own sleep routine.
I feel not so good about a few things.
1. He's completely changed her sleep routine to one where she felt secure to sleep on her own to being dependent on us to sleep beside her. Like I said, we would co-sleep when need be, but she never relied on us to be next to her the way she does now.
2. He's changing the family dynamics by sleeping with her in her room, while I sleep with the baby in ours. This bothers me quite a bit since there's no family bed here. It's him and her in her room, and baby and I in ours.
3. He's changing up her room by swapping beds, and plans on changing it back once we all move back to our regular sleeping schedules (parents in our room, kids in theirs, etc).
I've offered to take over and give him the bedroom, but he's insisting that the bed will be moved this weekend. End of story.
Can someone please give me a little advice on how I should be handling this? One part of me is happy to have a partner so willing to help, but I foresee some serious problems once the baby is born.
Last night I got so mad that I stormed out and bought a new guest bed (a BYO camping bed). I told him where I was going, but he's still unaware that I bought a new bed (which btw, we really can't afford). But my parents are coming to visit and they need something to sleep on.
Ugh. Am I overreacting? Any advice on how I could handle this?
But like I said, she's happy as can be and doesn't show any obvious signs of being tired, so I don't really worry about it.
