The Bedtime Battle

Ask any parent about their biggest challenge and they’ll probably tell you it’s sleep. With a newborn you’re up around the clock and with sleep regressions every time a growth spurt comes along, it seems there will never be a light at the end of the tunnel, or in this case a nightlight at the end of the pillow.

Baby Bro has been our “good sleeper” from the beginning. His big brother would struggle to fall asleep so often I don’t know how much gas I wasted driving aimlessly around our neighborhood well into his toddler years to get him to doze off. Drew and I became so familiar with the classical music station we could hum along to Piano Concerto Number 2 in C Minor. Don’t act like you’ve never heard of it, it was top of the charts in the early 1900s.

But Baby Bro, he sleeps like a rock. He naps for hours and he hardly ever wakes up during a transfer. For those of you who aren’t parents of young kids, a transfer is when you take your sleeping child from their car seat to their crib, unbuckling and opening doors like you’re defusing a bomb. It takes a steady hand and the silence of a ninja.

Like many other things during the “terrible twos,” sleep has now become a battle. Drew and I have been on the front lines on and off for weeks. At first, it was a harmless and adorable, “I want to sleep in mommy daddy’s bed.” Cute, right? So cute, we let him right in. Slightly less cute after getting repeatedly kicked in the face by a sleeping and squirmy little boy for the next few hours. Thank God we upgraded to a king size bed this year because for the following few nights I found myself sleeping next to my husband, my dog, my toddler, his stuffed turtle, Waddles the penguin, and teddy.

That weekend, we decided to “refresh” his bed. We took the bars off his crib and turned it into a toddler bed, talking it up the whole time. He hopped right in and slept like a big boy! Patting ourselves on the back, we went to sleep soundly. For one night.

The drawback of the toddler bed is that it does not actually contain your toddler. And the drawback of a toddler is that they’re mobile, tall enough to reach the door handle, and smart enough to unlock it.

The following night, I decided to take a “he’ll sleep eventually” approach. I took him on a 25-minute jog, he stood outside of my shower, and then he sat down with me to watch a reality dance show. At 10:45 he was still wide awake and smiling the whole time. When I went to bed, he followed right behind. He sat wide awake, squirming around for I’m not sure how long because I fell asleep despite it all. Then, I woke up to the noise of our garage door.

It was Drew, muttering to himself and gathering tools to assemble the crib at 1:30am. Thirty minutes later, the toddler was contained.

We may have won that bedtime battle, but we have not yet won the war. If you need me, I'll be fueling up the car and humming a soothing piano concerto. At this point, I'll do whatever it takes.