Age = 7 months 16 days

Since Linus was born, he has slept in a cot right next to our double bed. And increasingly, as he’s got older and I’ve got more comfortable sleeping with him, he’s transferred to beside me in bed at some point during the night. In fact, in the past month or two he’s been more in our bed than out of it.

Now, however, Bob and I have decided that we’d like to move back into a room on our own. We want to be able to go to bed without worrying about waking the baby with the light or our talking or our giggling or the bed creaking, and I think we both feel he’s old enough to feel happy sleeping in a room on his own. Hence this weekend I finally managed to sort out the six or seven boxes of junk that have occupied the bigger bedroom since February. I set up the (fold-out) double bed in there, and it looks great – it felt like we’d had a room added on to the house!

Two nights have followed the big separation, and so far it’s been a slow process. In fact, apart from about one and a half hours the first night, I’ve spent both nights in the bed in Bug’s room with Bug. Although I did try sleeping in the “new” bedroom, Bug has been dirtying almost every nappy day and night for the past eternity week or two, which means changing him in the night, which means a screaming baby who’s very hard to settle. If I had more energy I could try singing/rocking/feeding him to sleep, but it’s SOOOOO easy (as a breastfeeding mum) to lie down, latch him on, and fall asleep, even if I have to repeat the process every 1-2 hours throughout the night.

Thus Daddy has spent two nights on the fold-out. Ironically, he’s probably slept the worst of the three of us – much as he loves the new opportunity in theory, in reality he’s not used to being occupied by two pushy cats all night!

It’s no doubt going to be a gradual process, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the three of us sleep in all possible combinations of the two double beds and the cot for the foreseeable future. (And no, it is not possible for me or Bob to sleep in the cot!) And that’s fine by me… whatever suits the three of us best on a given night is fine (especially while we have the luxury of two bedrooms with double beds!). I just hope that I get to share a bed and bedroom with my husband at least a couple of nights a week!!