Our Kids
Last night I was reminded of how sucessfully surviving with kids depends so much on good team work between parents.
At 11 pm I sat in our darkened nursery, softly singing and rocking our restless 8 month old daughter, trying ever so carefully to lull her finally to sleep.
My husband was similarly occupied in our room with our 2 year old. Littleboy had woken frightened an hour before. Hubby had spent sometime calming him and trying to convince him to go back to sleep, to no avail.
At last he had brought him into our bed and now lay cuddling and gently patting him in an effort to settle him.
Finally I heard hubby get up and very slowly, doing his best to avoid the squeeky floorboards, make his way in to me. I smiled to myself as the nursery door very carefully opened and his head appeared. He raised his eyebrows and looked down at lttle daughter who had just dropped off to sleep.
I had to smile again at the charades. Both of us so DID NOT want to wake any of the kids again. The worst scenario is if all three wakeup and need comforting. Hard to clone ourselves and unfortunately the kids just make each other worse if they don’t get Mummy or Daddy’s full attention.
So I nodded slowly at husband to show she was asleep and then hubby motioned to the downstairs indicating he would ‘close up’.
Just as carefully I made my way back to our bedroom to put littlegirl back into her cot, which is ‘sidecared’ to our bed. With a sinking heart I then realised I was holding her the wrong way to easily put her in the cot and I was going to have to edge up our bed past 2 year old to put her in her cot. This gave me a few tense moments. And returning hubby watched with baited breath as I did just that. To accidently wake either of them at this point would have been awful!
With littlegirl settled we both turned to look at our little angel sleeping beautifully in our bed. We had a conundrum on our hands. Did we leave him to sleep with me while hubby slept in the spare room (been done often enough before but the spare bed is not the most comfortable)? I could see hubby’s heart sinking at the prospect! Alternatively, we could put littleboy back into his own bed. But the chances of him waking when we moved him were pretty good. And we would have to go through this process all over again as he would almost certainly wake babygirl and probably 6 year old as well with his protests. Oh god. What to do?
Again the charades! Hubby looked questioningly at me. I grimaced, but nodded and we both held our breath as littleboy was scooped up ever so gently by daddy and just as gently carried to his own bed. I listened with baited breath but heard no cries. I closed my eyes with relief!
We both lay down, side by side in our bed holding hands. Too tired for even a kiss goodnight!
I must have drifted off into sleep then because I was woken at what I thought was a short time later by littleboy calling. But when I opened my eyes I could see daylight and I thankfully realised it was morning. All three had slept through the night. Wow! Then I did the usual calculation to work out how many uninterrupted hours of sleep hubby and I had just had!
And of course, hubby and I will probably get to do the whole thing again tonight. With no guarantee we will be so successful. But at least we will be doing it together. As a team.
Mamasimx
Don’t forget to enjoy your day.
