Saturday, January 12, 2008

All by myself... ZZZZZ Part 2

After one year, one month and a week of sleeping on our bed, right smack between Umi and Abah night after night, Muhamad Mubarak is now putting himself to sleep all on his own in his own cot. That cot is supposed to also double up as a playpen but it has been grossly underused (currently it is a laundry hold-up area) as we do not believe in placing him there in the day and prefer to let him roam free.

It's not so much as kicking him out of our bed. It's more of getting him to learn to fall asleep on his own without me or his Abah next to him patting him to sleep or allowing him to breastfeed till he dozes off. We thought it was time to train him to sleep independently, to be able to put himself to sleep when he felt he was tired. We wanted to make sure he could do this before we ship him out to his own room hopefully by the middle of the year. (assuming by then we would have found the time to give the study a fresh coat of paint and hopefully get him a toddler sized bed)

It has been a week since he has slept in his own cot and since there has been no incidents whatsoever, I daresay we have successfully done it !! HE has done it! Bravo to my little prince for being so co-operative and making life such a breeze. The first night he kept whining to be taken out. With some distraction of his favourite books and finger games he was sleeping soundly.

The second night, he was still a little surprised when I placed him in his cot but he complied genially and didn't complain. The third night onwards, when his energy was all spent and he was sleepy, he pulled my hand to go with him into our room and pointed to his cot. I cannot describe the euphoria I felt when he did that. I guessed why it worked so well was because we were very gentle with him but firm, we kept assuring him we were nearby and that even though he was sleeping away from us both, we would be close enough should he needed us. We made it fun for him by playing games with him and tried not to make such a big deal out of it. (Even though it was a milestone for us!) But above and beyond that, whatever we did wouldn't have worked if Mubarak had been a cry-baby, fussy or the kind who is afraid of something new. This is probably the 20th million time I say this. But Syukur Alhamdulillah I have been blessed with such an easy to care for child. Hopefully the transition to his own room will be just as breezy

Next up.... potty training !!!!!! This one won't be so easy !!

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