A big girl bed

I wrote this in January and never got around to finishing it, but here it is: to be continued soon....

We had a pretty rough Christmas sleep-wise. About a week before Dave finished work for the holidays, our lovely baby girl stopped sleeping for longer than two hours, EVER. I'm talking day, night, day, night... it just won't end! Some nights she wakes up every hour, feeds for twenty minutes and falls asleep, then wakes up the next hour. So I've been getting maybe five or six 40 minutes blocks a night. AND this has coincided with the fourth-ish week of Benjamin's refusal to nap during the day- joy!

This is how it's gone the past few weeks: I would start to put her up to bed around 7 as usual, leave her asleep at about 7.45, then spend the rest of the evening going up and settling her over and over again, while Dave sat on the computer entertaining himself, unsure whether he would get to see his wife for longer than 10 minutes that day. It's been HORRENDOUS! Apologies for the potentially irritating use of capitals, but they don't even bring it close to how I've been feeling.
I feel lonely, up there all 'alone' scrabbling for the chance at a life. I feel that she is being completely unreasonable. All I want is a couple of hours to call my own. I look after these children all day, and I just want to spend a little time with my husband, is that too much to ask?? Clearly yes!

I have a rule with my kids that once it is bedtime, they stay upstairs. I have never once brought Benjamin downstairs after bedtime; I want him to respect that boundary so I have to too. I need time to be me. This does, of course, lead to the self-imposed torture I describe above. It has also meant several miserable nights spent in the rocking chair! But I believe it has been a huge factor in my Ben's miraculous habit of going to bed at 6.30 every single night and never being seen or heard until morning (I know that seems a little early, but we are early risers and he is up around 5.30/6am anyway, whatever time he goes to bed).

So I'm trying to think outside the box, and one thing we're trying at the moment is... the big girl bed!

It's a toddler bed I bought on eBay for Ben a while ago, although he's not interested in it at all. I raised it high enough to be level with our bed and hey presto! Her own bed that is actually still part of our bed. Incase anyone was wondering why there's a little green sheet on there, I have to double up sheets as she sleeps on her tummy and slobbers all over the bed! Parenthood makes you think laterally lol.