Parenting

When I had B I was very strict with how I wanted to do things. I didn't want to co-sleep because I figured it would be a terrible habit to break, I didn't want to rock her to sleep because then she wouldn't know how to self-soothe and yadda yadda blah blah blah!

I used to lay her down in her crib and pat her to sleep but she started to hate it so I rocked her. I have been rocking her little chunky butt every night since she was about 9 months old, I tried not to worry about it being a hard habit to break and instead focus on spending that time with her. About 2 weeks ago I tried to rock her to sleep, around 8pm which is her normal bedtime. She refused to sit still she wanted to run around so I let her. I figured maybe she just wasn't quite ready for bed yet. About 30 minutes later I tried again and the same thing, she threw a fit. At this point I knew she was getting tired she was showing all of the signs and I really didn't have a clue what to do so on a whim I took her upstairs and put her in bed and walked away. We listened for a bit expecting her to scream but instead, silence. After about 10 minutes I decided to go check on her and sure enough she was sleeping. I figured for sure that was a fluke. So the next day at nap time I tried to rock her and it didn't work so instead of fighting her I took her straight upstairs and laid her down in her crib, gave her kisses then went back downstairs. She put herself to sleep. This has been consistently happening for the past 2 weeks. And now she lets me know she's ready for bed by pointing to the stairs. She did this all by herself and I am so proud! I hate that, at one point, I actually listened to other peoples opinions on how I was raising B. We even tried letting her cry-it-out because I thought for sure that she would be rocked until the age of 28. I was so wrong.

Just recently I stopped listening to what everyone else thought of my parenting and started to trust myself a little more. We are going to potty train when SHE is ready, we are going to toss the binky out completely when SHE is ready and if she ever wants to sleep in bed with mommy and daddy then I'm going to let her.