A Story About Transitioning

snoozing in my arms one lazy afternoon

A friend and I were recently talking about the sleep schedule (schedule - HA!) of newborns and transitioning Aliyah from our room to her own room. The whole co-sleeping thing is a hot button topic...

Some parents swear by it - others are horrified by it. Personally, I think every family will figure out what works best for their individual needs. I don’t know if sharing our experience with transitioning Aliyah to the crib will be helpful or not - because if I’ve learned anything so far, it’s that every baby is so different and what works brilliantly for one may be a complete failure for another. But here goes...

When Aliyah was a newborn we started her off in a the infant sleeper that is attached to some pack-n-plays. We pulled the pack-n-play right next to our bed - she was waking so often to nurse that even getting up to go across the room to get her was wasting precious seconds of sleep. I was also obsessed with checking on her to make sure she was breathing so we slept with a lamp on in our room.

At three months, the pack-n-play's safety manual recommend that we no longer use the infant sleeper, so we moved her to the flat bassinet in the pack-n-play. We always put her to sleep flat on her back. She wasn't a fan of this, but swaddling really helped and also prolonged the length of time she would stay asleep at night.

Eventually, as she slept for longer periods of time, we pushed her pack-n-play to the other side of the room. It took me MONTHS before I was ready to transition her to her crib. I think she was ready within weeks after removing the infant sleeper - but I couldn’t bare the idea of her being in another room!

Truthfully, it didn’t happen until she was around 5 months old. Finally, finally I put on my brave mama face and put her down in her own crib in her own room. I slept fitfully but she actually did pretty well! I think that our turning over and movements woke her more often than I realized when she was in our room.

Now she’s exclusively going to sleep in her crib every night unless she’s sick - but we bring her into our room every morning when she wakes up (anywhere between 3am and 6am). I miss her the minute she goes to sleep - but it sure is nice to have alone time with my husband back!

My advice? Take your time - baby step the process and don’t feel like you need to rush it. There is no timeline - do what works for your family!