A victor in the Bedtime Battle!

I finally have the upper hand!

It took nearly two years, but I finally have the upper hand with my son in the Bedtime Battle!

Until a week ago, bedtime was a long and involved ritual which took anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours. There was lots of crying – and that’s just from myself.

The only way my son E would go to sleep is by falling asleep in either mine or my wife’s lap as we sat on the couch. Every night.

The worst part of the routine was getting up and walking to his bedroom, hoping and silently praying repeatedly that he would not wake up before he was in his crib and the door was closed. The Long Walk to His Room was something straight out of a suspense thriller. All too many times, just as we reached the door, his eyes shot open like some not-yet-dead monster in a horror movie and he would cry, “nooooo!”

And then we had to go back out to the living room and start the whole process all over, waiting for him to fall asleep. Again.

I began to fear that this bedtime routine would last well into his late 40’s.

I wrote (whined) about my frustration a few times on this blog and most of you advised that was that my wife and I HAD TO DRAW A LINE. We needed to put him to bed in a firm and decisive manner and let him cry it out and not give in.

However, some of you suggested that putting him to bed before he is asleep would increase his separation anxiety and would likely lead to permanent psychological damage which would result in him growing up and being in a death metal band, or worse, a politician.

Being first time parents, we are quite nervous about unintentionally “doing the wrong thing” so we settled for some middle ground. We let him fall asleep in our arms, then took him to his room. If he happened to wake up, too bad, we’d let him cry it out.

Well, THAT did not work out well at all.

He screamed like an angry, wounded animal and we relented. And so it went until last week.

I’m not sure how or why it happened. It wasn’t like we planned to do it, but my wife decided to simply bring him to bed at nap time, rather than the usual routine. She comforted him with an “I love you, it’s nap time” or something like that and put him in his crib, walked out and closed the door. Just like that.

He cried a bit, but then went to sleep.

Then we decided to try it at night.

I was sure it wasn’t going to work. If I were a betting man, I would have called Vegas and put all my money, $24.77, on us to lose the Bedtime Battle.

We sat on the couch, read him a book and then said, “okay, it’s time to go to sleep.”

He cried as he reluctantly walked towards his room, us following nervously behind. I couldn’t believe it. He was actually WALKING towards his room even though he didn’t want to go to bed!

Something was happening here. He was doing what we asked him to do!

We laid E down and he looked back and cried, and it broke our hearts. But at the same time, I felt like we had accomplished a major milestone. He slept through the night without a problem.

The next two nights followed suit.

He cried a bit when he realized it’s almost bed time. We told him to pick a book and we read it to him. On the second night he kept turning the pages back to the start, in attempt to delay the end of the book and the bedtime which would follow. Smart boy – I’m waiting for him to start asking us to read him 900 page novels.

But he is going to sleep without a fuss. We won the battle. Though, I can’t help but feel like we lost something. Our baby boy is growing fast.

Too fast.

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