Toddler Care
How To Get Your Toddler To Sleep In His Own Bed
I've always liked the idea of "co-sleeping", isn't it great to have someone who has been incubating in you for 9 months to be lying next to you in the deepest nights, now that the little sweet darling is born?
However, after 15months of co sharing a queen sized bed together with my husband and a boy who turns and toss and kicks me to the end of our bed leaving my pregnant bulging tummy hanging from the side, I decided it was time for my son to learn to sleep in his own bed. Either that or let's face it my husband or I will end up being banished from our queen sized bed instead!
It's definitely a time consuming task and encouraging your child to sleep in his or her own bed after so long can be quite a feat. But I guess all the efforts in the end will be well worth it. The thought of being able to toss and turn freely again and to not worry about having to wake him up or crush him drives me ahead!
Breastfeeding At 18 Months
I have been meaning to write a post about breastfeeding mainly because of the various reactions I see when people find out that I'm still nursing.
In the first rocky months of nursing, I got a lot of support and encouragement: keep going, don't stop, try for six months. After six months of nursing, people kept telling me, that's good but you can stop at one year. Which I thought was pretty strange - why would I reward my son with such a terrible gift for his first birthday? Then Ryan turned one, I was still nursing and suddenly I didn't get encouragement anymore, the questions became more like: isn't it difficult to keep going? Which I also found strange because things usually get easier the more you keep doing them. Now that I'm still nursing Ryan at almost 18 months, people just ask, so when are you going to stop? Usually, in order to put them at ease, I have to come up with some sort of target (maybe when he goes to school, maybe when I start planning for number 2, etc.).
I find it interesting to see all the different reactions and I suppose I'd ask the same questions if the positions were reversed. It's also interesting to listen to mummies who no longer breastfeed. Some give you a passionate explanation about why they stopped breastfeeding. Listening to these mummies, you can tell how much they loved breastfeeding and how much it hurt to give it up. Other mummies think nothing of it, they just move on.
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