Closet Sleeping

I’ve decided that if I have anything to do with it, the Banana will be sleeping through the night by the time she is 1 year old. (If my husband had had more to do with it, it would have happened about six months ago.) This leaves me just a little less than a month to work with. I’m tired of being tired all the time. The Banana is finally learning how to drink from something other than my num nums, which means that I can leave a sippy cup of water in her crib and not worry about her getting dehydrated without her multiple night feedings. (Because I usually get dehydrated if I go through the night without drinking water. But maybe that’s because of the multiple night feedings!)

Anyway, the first step to peaceful nights was obviously to get the Banana’s crib out of sight of our bed. As long as she can stand up and see us, she is inconsolable - we’re talking 3 to 4 hour crying jags. You’d think in a 4 bedroom house with only two children, moving her to another room would be a simple decision. But because of the weird layout of this house, it wasn’t. The master bedroom is on one end of the house, then there’s a large “great room” (living room/dining room/kitchen combined), then there are three small bedrooms on the other end. If we moved the Banana to one of the three small bedrooms, her night crying would likely wake up the Papaya, and having them both awake at the same time in the middle of the night is something to be avoided at all costs. (We know this firsthand, from unhappy hotel room experiences. They can keep each other awake interminably.)

So we moved the Banana into our closet, and it’s been working beautifully (except when Husband decides to hang his clothes in there before he goes to sleep at night and wakes her up.) If this sounds too weird to any non-family members who miraculously happen to read this blog, know that my family has a long and proud tradition of closet sleeping. My mother spent a teenage year in Detroit living in a closet under the basement stairs of her aunt’s house. When my cousin spent a post-high school year or two living with my parents, he was housed in another closet under the stairs. (But treated much better than Harry Potter.) When my sister and brother-in-law lived in a small house in Texas a couple years ago, their daughter’s bedroom was the closet. Last Christmas, at my sister’s house, my brother slept on the floor of the laundry room (technically not a closet, but close). And almost every time we visit my parents, the Papaya ends up sleeping in their closet.

With this kind of history, it’s hard to believe it took us so long to think of putting the Banana in the closet (we briefly considered the pantry). Already, she’s back to only one night feeding (she had regressed over the summer.) Last night was supposed to be the big night that I made her stay in bed until at least 5:00 a.m. I was all psyched for it. However, when the Banana woke up crying at 1:00 a.m., Husband told me I should get out of bed and feed her. “You get out of your side of the bed, and I’ll get out of my side at the same time and do something important while you feed the Banana,” he said. So I jumped out of bed, grabbed the Banana, and sat in the nursing chair with her. Husband did not keep up his end of the bargain. As I pulled up my nightshirt and looked over to see him sleeping soundly, I realized his suggestion had been but the tail end of a dream, and that the Banana would get at least one more night feeding. Despite Husband’s obvious innocence, I still couldn’t help feeling just a little betrayed by him!