That’s the first time Finn was ever in his crib. He was just a week old, and it didn’t last long. Somehow, though, through lots of trial and error, we had him sleeping through the night in his own crib by the time he was 7 weeks old. We write about that process, here.
Fast forward 2.9 years, and Finn still, happily, sleeps through the night in that trusty ol’ crib.
There are lots of changes coming down the road for us at the end of this summer, most of which coincide with the arrival of baby #2. Our world–and Finn’s world–will be rocked. Earlier this year, we decided to keep Finn in his existing preschool, rather than transfer to a nearby Montessori program, partly because we wanted to eliminate as many changes as possible.
Another change that we thought was going to be inevitable was that, because the kiddos are going to share a room and because we don’t want to buy another crib, it is time for Finn to move into a “big boy bed.”
This is just something we assumed would happen without really giving much thought about why it had to happen. Most of Finn’s friends–the ones who are his age–have long transitioned into toddler beds, and we already felt behind. (We’re behind with a lot of things, actually, including potty training. But that’s another post.)
“Shouldn’t you already have him in a bed?” my mom asked frequently, even offering to buy one for us.
We felt the pressure and guilt, but while we casually perused toddler beds online, we kept telling ourselves that we’d wait until summer to actually make the change. I think we were stalling. We stalled because we didn’t want our baby to outgrow his crib. We stalled because our lives are already full of all sorts of challenges, and we didn’t want to add transitioning to a bed to the list. We stalled, primarily, because Finn has always been an amazing sleeper, and why were we trying to fix something that wasn’t broken?
Of course, there are moms who would say that we should trust him. Believe that he’s capable of handling the transition. Let his maturity lead the way.
Yeah, that all sounds great in theory, but we are most interested in believing that we will be able to remain at least minimally sane and well-rested when the new baby arrives. And that’s when we had what should have been an obvious epiphany: We are Finn’s parents. We decide when it is time to try something new. If we want him to stay in the crib–and if he’s perfectly happy in his crib–why not just keep him there?
Why hadn’t this thought occurred to us before? I blame external influence, but the second we realized “Oh, you know what? He can just stay in the crib!” the decision was made. And a lot of anxiety was eased.
Here’s the thing: despite being a 6′ tall toddler, Finn has never once tried to climb out of his crib. (Knocking on wood as I type.) He’s never complained about his crib. He clamors to get into it at bedtime each night. He sleeps like a dream. He wakes happy and plays in his crib until we come to get him.
He’s also CONTAINED. In the crib, he’s a caged animal. In a bed, all bets would be off. Despite the fact that he’s yet to jail-break the crib, we have absolutely no doubt that, were he in a bed that he could easily climb out of, Finn’s life mission would be to subvert every single bedtime routine that we’ve worked to hone over the past few years.
Here is the scenario we replayed in our minds a thousand times before deciding to keep him in the crib: We’re exhausted, operating on just a couple hours of sleep. It’s 2AM. After many attempts, we’ve finally lulled our colicky newborn back to sleep and have just closed our eyes, knowing the baby will wake us again in just a couple of hours. Sleep begins creeping in; we welcome it. Then, suddenly, we hear a door creak open, the pitter-patter of little footsteps in the hallway, and BOOM! Just like that, Finn appears at our doorway, asks for a glass of water or a cookie or one of his toy cars, and any illusion of sleep we once had is yanked away from us. We rue the day we ever transitioned to a toddler bed, and we hate all of our friends and family who advised us as such forever. We die, tired and alone.
Okay, that’s a little melodramatic, but you get the idea. And when I posted the question on MamaTribe, asking 28,000 Chicago moms whether they’d put their soon-to-be 3 year old in a bed when he’s perfectly happy with a crib, I got an immediate, resounding “HELL NO!”
So, no. We will not be transitioning Finn to a toddler bed until he manages to climb out of the crib, asks for a bed himself, or threatens to burn the house down. The baby will sleep in our room in a Rock n Play for the first several weeks, and then we can transition to the bassinet I impulse-purchased from an online garage sale.
Our hope is that, by not changing this one thing, we all deal with The Big Change (aka: baby #2) a little better. And this is also a reminder that, no matter how much advice you receive about how to parent, ultimately, you have to go with your gut. And your sanity.