I realize the title of this post sounds a little dramatic and, well, not very nice, but before you call child services on me (seriously, please don’t), I have a very good reason. But before I get to that, let me share a quick snippet about me and my family. (Seriously, this is the shortest version I’ll probably ever share!)
Hi, I’m Jessica, not to be confused with the other lovely Jess whose blog I’m taking over today. I grew up in New Mexico, fell in love with a boy, married him, packed up my things, and moved to Georgia. He’s in the Air Force, so when they decided to send us to Italy for a couple years, it’s not like I could say no, so we packed our things again and moved overseas. So, there we were in Italy with copious amounts of wine at our fingertips, so we did what everyone else there was doing: we drank the water wine and had ourselves a baby! Four months after she was born, the military sent us back over the pond. Back in America, we spent three months living out of hotels, before moving back to Georgia for a second time.
Which brings me to our sleeping tale. (You can read the whole saga here) In a nutshell: we all walked around in a very sleepy haze for the first seven months of her life. My daughter fought nap time and night-time sleep so hard that I’m pretty sure she was the number one champion of not sleeping in the entire world. We finally discovered that she especially disliked sleeping whenever we were in the same room as her. Once we got her into her own room, everything changed and she started sleeping through the night. I’m pretty positive I heard angels sing the first time I slept for more than three hours at a stretch.
At this point, life was good. She was sleeping well, and even started being more independent, so we decided to go on a trip. A couple months ago my husband and I went on a cruise (with our 11-month-old baby in tow) for our anniversary. We were all extremely excited…until we got on the boat and had a minor freak out about where our she was going to sleep. If you’ve ever been on a cruise, then you know the rooms are the size of a toddler’s shoebox; there’s barely room to walk around, let alone space to set up a ginormous pack ‘n play!
After we tossed out the idea of letting her sleep outside on the balcony (we’re not that crazy, but we did think about it), my husband came up with an excellent idea: the bathroom.
So that’s exactly what we did. Every night, when it was time for her to “go night-night,” we moved the shower curtain completely out of the way and set the pack ‘n play up in the bathroom. It fit very, very snug, and it was perfect. It was better than perfect, actually: it was genius.
We did a modified version of our night-time routine (forgoing bath-time, for obvious reasons), and when it was time for me to put her down, I’d walked over to her “room,” turn on her sound machine, turn off the lights, place her in her bed, and shut the door. And you know what happened after that? She slept. She slept all night long. Genius, I tell ya!
Of course, I can’t promise this will work for your little one if you cruise, but it worked for us and I’m so, so thankful for it. If you’re interested in more tips for cruising with a baby, check out this post, where I share more things that worked well for us on that trip.
Have you ever had your child sleep in a crazy place for the sake of everyone’s sanity?
4 Responses
I had visions of you setting up a bed in a bathtub:) Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do!
I love cruising, and have done two with children — once with our son when he was 18 months old, and again with both kids when they were 15 months and 3 1/2. It. Is. Hard. I think it’d be easier with babies being littler, but man once they’re mobile… holy moly it is hard!
This is awesome, though… as long as you don’t need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night 😉 Which I can’t remember a time when I didn’t, but that’s because I’m 22 weeks pregnant and don’t remember what it’s like to not have a baby dancing on my bladder 😉 Ha!
Great post!!!
Haha my son has slept in more bathrooms and closets than I can count! Totally normal if you ask me!!
My child was the same way. He preferred sleeping on his own and in his own room. Even now he will not fall asleep with me holding him. When it is night-night time we just lay him in his bed and close the door. I love that he is such an independent sleeper.