RE: Over an hour!!!

My comment was too long again:

Same here. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing something wrong, bc it feels like too great of a committment to hang in there every evening. On the other hand, I suppose it's only bc lots of people share the opinion that kids are supposed to sleep alone (which I do not agree in general). By now most evenings go pretty smooth and I enjoy taking a break and being close with my baby as well. And I know she also falls asleep with other people taking her to bed, so I don't worry about her getting too focused on me as a person.

But I always have the sentence in the back of my mind that babies shouldn't connect sleeping time with cuddling time as they learn to misunderstand their own needs. That kind of makes sense to me. I definitely support co-sleeping, but I wonder if other co-sleepers find a good way of separating falling asleep and cuddling. And yet, as I write this it seems ridiculous to me. If I had a choice, I would prefer falling asleep in someone's arms as well. And then again I think, why should we force us to separate these too things every night, when 95% of the cases we both prefer it this way.

Falling asleep actually is not the main problem anymore. I don't mind (most of the times) taking this break for 15-60 minutes. She lays down and tries to fall asleep - no being angry for being sent to bed or jumping on the bed anymore. So no more fights, which makes it easier. But I wish she wouldn't wake up again and again until she falls into the real deep sleep. There are few nights, she just sleeps and that's it. I can almost see a pattern (probably the sleeping phases, I didn't get into it yet): she wakes up 1 hour later, then every 20-30 minutes later (up to 4 times). And she gets worried/angry, bc I'm not next to her anymore. She tells me to lie down (literally: "lay down" pointing to my pillow). The more angry she got the longer it takes her to fall back asleep. So usually I hurry to go in there soon as I hear some weeping. Sometimes putting the pacifier back in does the job and I can go out right away. Lucky! But like I say, when she got angry about my leaving, it might take another 15 minutes. Sometimes it doesn't seem to "work" at all, so I take her back to the living room to prepare for going to bed (lights off, computer off, set alarm...) and then go to bed early myself - frustrating as I usually look forward to my 2 hours Mommy time -- no, Kerstin time I should rather say! Or very very few nights, she falls asleep on my lap and I can still do something (so my frustration level doesn't overflow).

And yet I wonder, why she hasn't learnt that I'm going out after she fell asleep and that I'm always coming, if she wakes up. No need to get angry. We've been doing this for almost all her life. Or maybe she has learnt that she has to be angry, so I come back? But this would involve that she realized not being angry doesn't make me come back - which has never been the case, I always came back within seconds maybe a minute. Or is it rather proof for the deep need of a child to be protected and not feel alone while sleeping? In other cultures co-sleeping is the normal thing until kids are 5 years old (in several cultures, so it seems like a certain natural change then). Maybe that's the natural age for children to learn and feel safe to sleep on their own.

So it seems like the peaceful falling asleep together has the price of her getting angry at me/me spending too much time waiting in bed, instead of enjoying my evenings. Any idea for a better solution? I don't have an outside view anymore... and there have been 3 weeks (a month ago before she got sick again) that she didn't wake up. I was hoping this would be a new era... but it obviously was a PHASE... (which I loved loved loved! And miss miss miss!)