And nobody died

Beni slept in her own bed, in her own room last night, and nobody died.  (Yes, for a long time I've been pretty sure that not sharing air with her would result in one of us dying at night, and the same goes for Zintis now.  We all have our thing!)

She's sick now.  Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), I think.  But she's also got a snotty nose, and is just over a fever.  And this HFMD causes sores on the body, including in the mouth/throat, which can be extremely painful.  So it's no wonder she wasn't sleeping that great.  But, apparently I reached my limit.  Or something.  I reached my limit of watching Joel suffer the lack of sleep.

So yesterday she and I gussied up "her" room some more- enough so that it could be called her room.  We brought a shelf into it (guest room bed is now covered in towels, sheets and blankets- must find a place to put those!), and brought up a bunch of her soft toys and books.  We added a few pictures to the headboard as well as her water bottle, a little lamp, a box of tissues and the monitor.  It still needs stuff on the walls to really feel like a little girl's room, but, it's good for now.

I was dead set then, that she would sleep in that bed last night.  And she did.  She did not want to.  She told Joel right away that she had no intention, so I re-took-over bedtime, and used that special mommy voice that reminds a kid, "we talked about this, we worked on this, and now you're going to do it!"  So we filled her bed with friends, said goodnight to family in the pictures, got a drink, went to the toilet again, and then I sat in the chair by the bed while she fell asleep. She played with all her noise making toys for a while, but about a half hour later, she finally drifted off.  She woke up a handful of times between then and 1am, and I went to her, gave her drinks and hugs and more medicine when the time was right, and put her back in bed.  After 1am, she slept until morning- when Joel left at 7am he went in and gave her a kiss on the cheek, but she was still sleeping when he left.  (This is actually quite a normal sleeping pattern for her.  There is NO doubt in my mind that she will eventually sleep just like her father- late to bed, not so many hours sleep needed, taking extra hours in the morning, if ever.)

So she did it.  And I did it.   And that is a big deal.

Part of what spurred this was my increasingly not-nice reactions to her middle of the night screaming, but also an article I read on HuffPost yesterday.  Something about how sometimes giving to our children actually means taking something away.  Like, they'll NEVER learn to do things for themselves (clean, cook, WHATEVER) until someone gives them a chance to learn these things- which means not doing it for them.  The author extended this idea to letting them soothe themselves to sleep. I don't agree with her note of "leaving them to scream, so they can figure out that they can soothe themselves", but I do agree that, in our situation, we had gotten to a point where Beni could try out being in her own sleeping space- and just seeing what that felt like.  And who knows, maybe it will lead to something else... like if she wakes up and sees she in her own space with her animals, she'll think, "Hmm, maybe I should cuddle them instead of sitting here screaming."  Maybe. Maybe not.  I guess we'll see.

I have to say though, waking up this morning to realize that we'd had quite a nice long stretch of sleep, and that she had survived the night in her room, and that we would most likely try to repeat it again every night in the near future also made me think of  this HuffPost article. And it made me hope and pray that the night she spent screaming in our bed, with me trying to tell her over and over again that I was right there and WHAT DO YOU WANT and then putting my hand over her mouth just to block the full impact of that horrible full-throated, unabashed cry-scream was not the last night she ever spends in our bed.  Yes, "we" do want her to move toward her own bed, but, I hope and assume that we will welcome her back for a nicer, calmer, more loving last time sometime soon.  Ugh, I hope.

I guess both of those articles made me think about the things we do for our kids, and at what cost.  I want my children to grow to be independent and capable.  I do.  But, I also believe there is plenty of time for them to learn certain lessons.

But, in any case, I just hope she sleeps, in my bed, her bed, someone's bed.  Just sleep. :)



Update: She did it again last night- two nights in a row.  But last night I did have to get up several times to go to her.  But, she's still sick, and needed meds every time.  Poor thing.