Hospital vs. Home Birth

So I recently wrote a post about Everett's birth story and it took me back to being 20 weeks pregnant trying to figure out if a home birth was for us. There was so much information out there to absorb and it was slightly overwhelming at times. That post got a really great response, so I've decided to throw my 2 cents out there in terms of having your birth at the hospital or at home for all of you that are wanting to know more. See I have experienced both, so I feel like I have some good points to offer.

Before I start making all of my wonderful points I want you to think about yourself. When I decided where I wanted to give birth (both times) it was because I knew my "nonnegotiables". When Eli was born I was having an epidural and it was not up for discussion. Therefore, I birthed in a hospital. When Everett was born I was NOT having an epidural and it was not up for discussion. Could I have done that in a hospital? Absolutely, but I chose not to because of the information that I am about to share. You should consider what is absolutely out of the question for YOU. Then keep in mind that nothing is 100% nonnegotiable in the birthing process :)

Here come my amazing points.

The Domino Effect
Chances are you are going to choose to deliver with an OB in a hospital. So first I need to tell you about the domino effect. You go into labor, go to the hospital, have an epidural, contractions slow down because of the epidural and you're given pitocin to encourage contractions. As a result, contractions are unnaturally strong and cause the baby's heart rate to drop. Your doctor tells you that you need a cesarean because it is in the baby's best interest. You agree because that's scary to hear and now you're having surgery. So the epidural resulted in pitocin and the pitocin resulted in the cesarean. If you get induced you start out with pitocin. So you have these unnaturally strong contractions and probably want that epidural which will lead to more pitocin and ultimately a cesarean. Wow. Now you may be the exception. You might get induced, have an epidural, and still deliver vaginally. You are rare. Statistically, interventions during labor result in cesareans. Why? Because it's safe, quick, and easy for doctors. I have a huge problem with this ridiculousness that has become the norm in American hospitals, so I decided to go all natural with my second child. So this post is really geared for women who want natural births and are trying to decided where to have it.

Midwife vs. OBGYN
Jim Gaffigan does this hilarious bit about how he and his wife used a midwife with their four children because they believe in witchcraft. It's hilarious because it's so true that most people don't understand the role a midwife plays. People used to ask us, "Well what if something serious happens?" and that question is absolutely warranted. There are like three things that a midwife cannot do for you at a birth. They can't give you blood, perform an epidural, or perform a cesarean. Everything else falls under their realm of expertise, and let me tell you that they are freaking experts. So now that I've vouched for their capabilities here are some smaller points.

A midwife gives you more attention. Mine was at our home for like 18 hours straight. Seriously. I didn't spend 18 hours total with my OB in the entire duration of my first pregnancy. Okay, so they have OBs blown out of the water there.

A midwife educates you. Now, my midwife was above and beyond. She made it clear from our first meeting that if I chose to go down that road I was to learn things. Maybe not all midwives are this amazing, but I would bet that the majority are. My OB, on the other hand, only offered up information when I asked. It goes back to the whole "attention" thing. An OB has a lot more patients than a midwife, therefore a lot less time for each one. She didn't have time to sit there and talk to me in length about my diet or tell me how I can better my baby's position.

A midwife looks for the "why" when something is going on. Now again, this could vary from midwife to midwife and even OB to OB, but I have a good reason for why I include this varying point. I was group b strep positive when I was pregnant with Eli, so I was given antibiotics through an IV during labor. I totally understood this at the time, but when I was pregnant with Everett and still seeing my OB they didn't test me and said that it wasn't necessary because I was positive last time. Now group b strep comes and goes, so it didn't sit very well with me that I wasn't given anymore information on how to prevent it. I just was and would forever be group b strep positive in their eyes. One of the first things I asked my midwife about was what she did for women who were group b strep positive. Her response was completely different than my OBs. All of a sudden it was a matter of my diet and how to prevent myself from needing antibiotics during labor. You see, because antibiotics might kill bad bacteria, but they kill all of the good bacteria too. Trust me you don't want to kill all of the good bacteria, ladies. Yeast infection for days. So, did I need antibiotics during labor? Nope, and it was all because of a small change in my diet. Thank you, midwife.

You have immediate contact with your midwife. How annoying is it to call the doctor's office and never even speak to the doctor? That just never happens with a midwife. You can call, text, and email them and they will actually call, text, and email you back! What?!

The ONLY downside that I would say there is to using a midwife is that most insurance providers don't cover it. Awful, I know. But in this downside there is an upside. If you're like us and have a high deductible then you're still going to pay less using a midwife in cash. Midwives just don't cost as much as using an OB and delivering in a hospital. So for us it was completely worth it to pay her cash. We saved thousands of dollars.

Comfort
I cannot accurately voice my praise for giving birth in my own house. It was so comfortable. My bed, my couch, my food, my bathroom. Everything in the hospital is unfamiliar including the people coming into your room. You might also find it hard to truly labor the way your body wants to. Now I didn't make a whole lot of noise until the pushing part, but I've read that some women really feel the need to make some native noises through contractions. Who wants to go native in a hospital? No way. I want to be in my own space surrounded by familiarity.

Not only is being able to labor at home awesome, but after you deliver you can crawl into your own bed with your baby and camp out for days. No hospital stay. No hospital food. And your sweet husband doesn't have to sleep on a chair haha. Now one of the things to keep in mind is that at home, your husband, mom, sister, whoever is going to be taking care of you for the next few days. No nurses are there to bring you anything or help change anything. So you will be needing a great support team or person who is willing to wait on you hand and foot free of charge with no complaints :)

Control
When you birth at home you are in control in more ways than one. First of all, you control who is present for this extremely personal experience. From labor and beyond you know exactly who is there, where the baby is, and who has the baby. In the hospital there are many unknowns. I didn't know the woman who took Eli and measured him. I didn't know when the pediatrician came and  circumcised him. I didn't know who was caring for him in the nursery when he was jaundiced. There were so many people that he had contact with in his first days and I didn't even know them. It freaks me out so bad now that I am cringing as I type this. But, when Everett was born I knew everything. Even in my hazy postpartum hemorrhage state I knew exactly where Everett was and who was caring for him. It was comforting to still have that control even when going through a postpartum complication.

You also have more control over your labor at home. There is no doctor there prematurely telling you that you're not progressing fast enough, so we might need to do a cesarean. There are no hourly checks to see how far you're dilated, unless you really want them. You have the option of laboring in water (not all hospitals do). There's a lot less pressure to labor any specific way or on anyone else's clock.

Logic
My home vs. germ infested building where sick people congregate? Haha another Jim Gaffigan joke. But really...think about it. Why do people go to the hospital? Either they are injured or sick. A healthy pregnant woman is neither. So why has it become normal for women to deliver babies in hospitals? Well, labor is painful. We tend to associate pain with negative thoughts, and this particular degree of pain would be considered an emergency to many. The only place to rid yourself of the pain is in a hospital with the help of an epidural. What we have failed to acknowledge as a society is that this is pain with purpose behind it. Eliminating that pain sort of throws a wrench in the birthing process. There is a quote by Laura Stavoe Harm that I found so profound and it really changed my perspective on labor pain. She said, "There is a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong." You can handle labor and delivery until you start telling yourself that you can't.


Ladies, your birth experience will be your own. No matter how many posts you read or videos you watch, yours will be different. Seek information and educate yourself on the birthing process. Make decisions based on what is right for you and your baby. Surround yourself with people who make you comfortable and support your decisions. Don't close your mind off to any options because you never know what situations will occur. Keep the ultimate goal in mind. Healthy mama. Healthy baby. Also, watch Jim Gaffigan talk about home birth because it's hilarious :)

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Everett's Home Birth

It's already been almost 7 weeks since Everett was born! WHAT? That's crazy. What's also crazy is that it has taken me almost 7 weeks to write this story down. I not even sure where I really want to begin, so I'm just going to start from those last miserable days of being past my "due date". I was feeling incredibly miserable, as you could imagine feeling being 40+ weeks pregnant...in July...in Texas. Nevertheless, I insisted on walking as often as I could stand it outside. So there I was on July 13th walking at the park while Hayden and Eli played on the playground. It was like 6 in the evening, and even though I had felt no contractions all day long I was still optimistic that if I walked my rear end off I might go into labor that night.

We then entered into that place where it's like, "Could this be labor?? This isn't labor. But I keep feeling cramps. Maybe this is labor." Having been induced with my first babe and also having had that epidural, I had no clue what going into labor was supposed to feel like. Turns out, for me, it felt like period cramps. When we got home from the park I was feeling said cramps once every ten minutes or so. They were super mild. I had been texting my midwife, Sam, and she told me that things would start to move along when Eli went to sleep. Sure enough as soon as Hayden put Eli to bed my contractions started getting stronger and some were happening closer to 7 minutes apart. Midwives are so wise.

I remember Hayden and I watching a movie like nothing was going on. Just taking it easy still having contractions. I went to bed to get some sleep while I could since it seemed like this was the real deal. I laid down and all of a sudden I was having stronger contractions at 5 minutes apart. My midwife text me and said to sleep as much as I possibly could and to text her in an hour with an update. So I was in and out of sleep with these stronger contractions. They were still very manageable and as long as I wasn't on my back when they hit I was fine. Oh by the way, being on your back during a contraction is ridiculously awful. I was all about being on knees and elbows with my face on a pillow.  Much better.

After the hour passed I text Sam and told her that they were still 5 minutes apart and gradually getting stronger. She said she would load up her things and be on her way. An hour later she was there. She told me to go back to bed while she prepped her stuff. Hayden had already blown the pool up before he went to bed, so that was done. At about 4 in the morning I could not take being on my bed any longer. I had to get up and move around. My mom had shown up and her and Sam were in the living room. I don't remember how far away contractions were. At this point I was focused only on getting into some zone I didn't even know I would get in. I tuned everyone and everything out for the most part. Headphones went on and I rocked and swayed with each contraction.

One of the most awesome things (if you consider any of it awesome) about labor is that you get breaks. The contractions are pretty painful, but you ride it and then it's over. Amazing, right? You get some time before the next one comes. Your body is designed to give you brief intermissions in one of the most physically challenging events you'll ever face. It's incredible and focusing on it really can help you push through one contraction at a time. At some point Hayden and Eli both woke up and the pool was filled. Eli was taken to my parent's house and I was in the pool most of the next four hours. For anyone on the fence about birthing in water, my advice is to at least have it there for labor. It didn't ease any pain (haha nice try), but it made everything more comfortable. Not to mention it helps to spare your unmentionables when it's show time. Worth it? Shoot yeah.

So it was probably sometime around 9:30am when I had a contraction that was so hard that I actually looked up at Hayden and thought I was going to cry. They had been getting pretty bad, but this one actually made me want to throw the towel in everyones face and go no further. Obviously you can't just go no further, and I knew I was just experiencing that questionable feeling you're supposed to get right before it's about to go down (literally haha!). My super amazing midwife did not even have to touch me to know what was going on. She had already set up all of the supplies around me that she would need when Everett made his appearance.

I went into that place right before pushing where your body gives you a break. It was almost like the contractions eased up and I was able to rest. Your body does this because you're about to wear yourself out! I was having a contraction when Sam asked me to try a little push. It was such a flipping relief, so I positioned myself in the pool how Sam suggested and I started pushing. Okay now this is the part that I subconsciously decided to block out immediately following delivery, so I don't think I can describe it perfectly.

The act of pushing a baby out is by far, and will forever be, one of the hardest things I have ever done. I know that some women have the glorious ability to push a baby out without screaming or nearly passing out. Not me. No way. I in no way planned on feeling like one of those actresses in a movie going through active labor while screaming their poor lungs into oblivion. Totally happened. It doesn't sound long, but I think I pushed for like 10 minutes tops. It felt like forever and I did have a brief moment where I felt like I was going to pass out. BUT in all fairness, I nearly had him out several times. That's a lot of ring-of-fire experience. He kept creeping right back on in! WHY?! His cord was wrapped around his neck and was sort of having a bungee-cord effect. My quick acting midwife unwrapped it on a really big push and boom...theres a head. Little more push and boom...there's a baby. 10:10am on July 14, 2015. He didn't cry immediately. Little bit of a scared mama moment as Eli had wailed like a dinosaur from the get-go. But he started crying and his heart rate was perfect. My first thought was "Oh my gosh, he's tiny." I was completely wrong about that though, probably because I was used to my 40 pound three year old. Everett was a whopping 8 pounds and 11 ounces. We didn't find any of that out until later though. After some time of just holding him, I was ready to get out of the pool.

 I think that Sam knew something was looking off about me because she was very cautious when she and Hayden helped me out and onto the couch. I laid there awhile and nursed Everett for the first time, but I felt a little distant and weird. When I got up for the first time it was pretty obvious that I was feeling weaker than I was supposed to. I told Sam that I was feeling lightheaded and she asked me to lay down. She gave me some oxygen and a shot of pitocin because I was hemorrhaging. I remember lying there on the floor with he oxygen mask on thinking, "I'm hemorrhaging, which was one of my biggest fears, but I'm not worried. Strange." Sam was just so quick and confident in everything that she did. I never felt concerned for myself. Once I kind of leveled off Hayden carried me to our bed where I pretty much camped out for the next few hours. I spent time with Everett and Eli, slept, and we took all of Everett's measurements and Sam deemed him a healthy boy. That was when we found out that he was not "so tiny" after all. 8 pounds and 11 ounces and just over 21 inches long. He looked so similar to Eli with the exception of his coloring and the fact that he had hair. He was darker and I thought for sure he was going to have dark hair like me. It has since lightened. No mama look-alikes around here, but that's okay :)

Well there it is. I got all the big details down. The more personal details are the ones I remember more accurately. Like how Hayden was there to grab or lean into for nearly all of the hard contractions, giving words of encouragement and being the rock I knew he would be for me. Or like how I opened my eyes after a particularly rough contraction and my sister was sitting in front of me like she had materialized out of thin air. Her familiar carefree smile was so comforting. And there was definitely nothing like that feeling when Everett finally came. It was so surreal. Obviously it was awesome because I had just had a baby, and there's not much more satisfying than finally getting to meet your newborn face to face. Along with it though is this incredible sense of self triumph. You literally feel like you can do anything. That feeling mixed with the utter euphoria of holding your new baby makes the moment seriously extraordinary.

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Why We Chose a Homebirth for Our 2nd

I almost feel hesitant to write this post. I have this image of a woman who is 39 weeks pregnant and is planning on delivering in a hospital with an OB, and after she reads this post she flips out because I have painted a horrifying picture a mere week or two before her labor and delivery. However, I really wish I had read a post like this when I was pregnant with my first. I would have done so many things different.

So here it goes.

My philosophy and outlook during my first pregnancy was very mainstream. I would use an OBGYN and deliver in a hospital with meds, because who in the world would prefer to endure labor when there are epidurals around? I actually remember having conversations about it and saying, "Heck yeah I'm getting an epidural. Why wouldn't I?" I was also pretty certain on the fact that I was delivering this baby vaginaly. Absolutely no c-section unless it was 100% necessary. 

About a month before my due date my doctor recommended that we induce because the baby was getting big according to measurements from the sonograms. My doctor was afraid that I wouldn't be able to deliver the baby vaginally if we let him get too big. My husband and I, being nervous first timers, went along with her advice. I was adamant that I was not having a c-section, so whatever she said that increased the chance of having a vaginal birth sounded swell to me. SO we scheduled to induce on a Thursday morning...an entire day BEFORE my due date. Stupid. 

We checked into the hospital at 7 in the morning on May 30, 2012. By 9am my water had been broken by my doctor and pitocin was being administered through an IV. If you are a first timer and don't know yet, pitocin is the drug that causes the uterus to contract. This point in labor was still very fun and exciting. We had family members and friends visiting and we were never alone save for the nurse visits when it needed to just be Hayden and me. I was beginning to feel contractions, but they felt pretty mild. I'd say sometime around noon the contractions strengthened quite a bit, so Hayden asked everyone to leave the room, we ordered an epidural, and I listened to Mumford for the time being. An hour later I had my epidural.

Oh my goodness, how chill it was from there. I was relaxed (not being able to feel from the waist down will do that) and people were in and out visiting again. After about two hours my doctor came to check me and announced that I had not progressed. I was stuck at 4cm dilated. No big deal at this point and the nurse would check me again in an hour. She came. Nothing. No progress still. The next time my OB came in the word "cesarean" began to make ugly occurrences in the conversation. I remember thinking "But it's only been like 8 hours...let me finish!" She agreed to let me keep going, but if there was no progress on the next check she was going to advise a cesarean. 

So here I am, trying to will my body to dilate while being totally numb from the waist down. Obviously I was restricted to the bed and walking was not an option. I'm thinking, "Crap, how can I make this happen?" Luckily, I had one heck of a nurse attending to me after a shift change. Her name was Stephanie and she was my champion. She completely understood my seriousness in having a vaginal birth and she spent a lot of time helping me reposition on the bed to encourage the baby to move. Thankfully, on the next check I had progressed to a 5! A hard earned centimeter for Stephanie and me! 

I progressed pretty consistently from there and at about 10:30ish I was apparently ready to push. I still can't feel a thing, so my mind really has no idea how close we are. I am put into position, on my back with knees up, and I start to push. Fifteen minutes and one episiotomy later BigE made his appearance! They placed him immediately onto my chest and started to wipe him down. He was so beautiful and strange looking and BIG. He was an average size baby weighing 7 pounds 12 oz and measuring 21 1/2 inches in length, but I remember looking at him and thinking, "There's no way he was just inside me, he's so big!"

The next 24 hours were full of firsts and so much joy, which I will talk about in a different post. This post is still about why we decided to go with a homebirth for baby #2. So here I am with a new baby and I still can't walk. I am also extremely tired and hungry beyond belief (you're not supposed to eat while you're in labor at the hospital). Around midnight they moved us to our recovery room where the 3 of us would stay. I threw up on the way there, a side effect of all of the drugs that had been given. We got to our room and tried to sleep. I needed help with everything from getting up to go to the bathroom to getting water. It took the epidural awhile to wear off and it sucked. 

At Eli's 24 hour check-up they determined that his jaundice levels were too high, although they never conducted a test to confirm so, or if they did I didn't know about it. He spent the next two days in the damn nursery under lights. I was not even notified when he was circumcised. They just wheeled him in screaming after the fact. I was livid. They brought him to us for feedings since I was also adamant about breast feeding. We were advised to supplement the breast milk with formula since his system was apparently not filtering through quick enough to kick out the jaundice.  Again, as first timers, we agreed. I was a wreck and cried a lot those two days. I wanted to go home and actually spend time with the baby that I had spent 40 weeks waiting to meet. 

On June 2nd, three days after check in, we were told we could go home. Thank God, get me out of this hospital! We were out the door and in the ever so cautious first-time car ride scenario in no time. What a relief. I felt so many things, but the most obvious feeling was of relief to be out of that hospital. Next to that I was totally elated! I had just had a baby! It made it easier to forget all of the hospital crap, which I did. Until two and a half years later when I got pregnant again. 

With a new baby on the way, I started thinking back to the hospital experience and really began to dread the whole thing. I knew that this time I wanted to not be induced, because I don't believe it was warranted with a legitimate medical reason last time. I started researching hospital interventions during labor (pitocin, epidurals, caesareans, ect.) and the more I learned, the less I wanted. What I learned was so reflective of my personal experience that I felt ridiculously naive for not doing more homework the first time. Here are some simple truths about hospital interventions during labor:

>Pitocin causes contractions that are longer and stronger than natural occurring contractions.

>This may lead you to wanting an epidural.

>This causes your labor to slow because you can't feel a damn thing.

>This increases the chance that you will either be given more pitocin or will be wheeled in for a cesarean section.

>If you are given more pitocin you will likely not feel the difference because you have had an epidural, but that baby will. 

>The longer and stronger contractions may cause the baby's heart rate to drop.

>Your doctor may recommend a cesarean for the sake of the baby and you will agree because that's scary. 

Okay so pitocin and epidurals may lead to a cesarean, I just won't have either one of those and I'll be fine. So now more research on 100% natural births in hospitals. It was relatively grim. It's totally possible in the right hospital with the right doctor and the right support team. BUT without these aspects in place it's difficult. You're faced with alot of interruptions in a hospital and a lot of pressure to progress through labor quickly, but the interruptions are more than likely going to slow your labor. 

Well crap. None of this sounds like what I want for my second labor and delivery. At this point I have definitely decided to go all natural, but I definitely don't want the word "cesarean" to make any ugly occurrences if I'm not progressing quickly enough according to my doctor or any other hospital staff. Labor is going to be hard enough without having to battle pressures like that. 

It was at this point that I began to consider a homebirth.   

I have cousins who have had home births, so I wasn't totally ignorant of the concept. It was just never something I had considered for myself. More research and then I stumbled upon "The Business of Being Born" documentary on Youtube. I watched it and my mind was set. The only thing I had to do was convince Hayden that this would be right for us. He watched the same documentary and his mind was open to it. He wanted to meet with a qualified midwife and question her before he was sold. Which we did, and he totally is. After our initial meeting with our midwife, I felt so at ease and in control. I was also pissed because in one meeting she gave me more knowledge than my OB had in the almost 40 weeks I had been seeing her. Our midwife is very big on educating us as we go. She has  also made Hayden a more active participant which I think is amazing. You can tell that she really wants the experience to be ours, which is exactly what I was looking for. We are currently 30 weeks along and I am still extremely thrilled and confident in our decision. I will keep y'all posted!

Until next time,
Elizabeth

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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Trial

I recently downloaded the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 30-Day Free Trial. You can find it here if you're interested in trying it out. There are so many payment options and bundles available on the website that it's kind of overwhelming. Adobe seems to really want to charge you $9.99/month which I am not into. I like to purchase things outright, and I had to do some navigating to find the page to do so. If you're like me and like to make one single payment and call it done the link is here. It will cost you $149 plus tax of course. If I end up liking my free trial, this is the route that I will go. Be sure to check out the deals they offer for teachers and students!

So back to my free trial. Let me begin by saying I am new to the DSLR world as well as any form of photoshop out there. I am a newb through and through. I will in no way pretend to have a full understanding of all of the features my camera has, much less Lightroom. I simply have not had enough time to explore everything and play. So since you're reading this I assume that you are a newb as well. Welcome. I hope we learn something.

So far the thing that I have found the most awesome on Lightroom is the capability to spot enhance. You can enhance eye color and clarity without affecting the rest of the photo. You can fix blemishes on skin ridiculously easily. Along with that you can get rid of out-of-place objects or spots in the photo. AMAZINGLY easy, even for me the newb.

One of the first things I do when I edit a photo is play with the exposure. If the picture is too dark you may need to increase the exposure and vice-versa. This is super easy to do and can make a huge difference, but it's not the right move for every photo. This shot of my son on a snow day was a little dark, so I increased the exposure and called it a day. Beautiful.

The photo below has been darkened (decreased exposure) and the sun spots have been edited out using the "Spot Removal" feature. That feature is going to be amazing for close-up portraits, especially with an active 3 year-old who is always sporting a new bruise, scrape, or bug bite.

Like I mentioned, one of the most awesome things (so far) is that I can enhance part of a photo without touching the parts I like. Two features that make this possible are the gradual and radial filters. The gradual filter was tricky at first, but basically it lets you split your photo down a straight line in any direction and then edit just one side. The radial filter allows you to encompass a round section of your photo and either enhance the inside or outside of the selected section. A perfect use of this feature might be to brighten a face or eyes. Below is a photo that I used the gradual filter on to even out the light in the photo. I also used the spot removal feature to fix imperfections on the skin. 

All in all I am pretty satisfied with Lightroom so far. I think it is relatively user friendly once you have spent some time on it. As of now I will probably purchase the download for permanent use. Which will likely lead to feature specific tutorials, so stay tuned! 

Until next time,

Elizabeth

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How We Got a Toddler Out of Our Bed

This post is for the sleep-deprived parents of young kiddos. I feel the pain. I know your struggle. For nearly three years our son slept in between my husband and I. It was like sleeping next to a thirty pound penguin who is constantly flopping around trying to get comfortable. Torturous...sleepless nights...awful. Sleep is ridiculously essential not just to survive, but to maintain a reasonable level of sanity. I can now say with some flimsy confidence that my sanity has leveled out after almost three long years. That's right, he's out of our bed and in his own (sweet sigh of victorious relief). 

I will share the bizarre story with you of how this came to be, but first you have to understand that there is no certainty that anything I say will help you. That's a terrible thing to say (laughs) I know! We tried so many things for so long, so you'll just have to start trying anything and everything...eventually something is bound to work. Right?

Where do I start? The days before his first birthday when we tried to let him self-soothe in his crib. Fail. He would cry for twenty-thirty minutes (if we were lucky), pass out, and wake up a couple of hours later ready to start right back up. This did not fly for long. We enjoy our precious hours of sleep around here so we weighed the option of sleepless nights full of crying against the option of having a baby in our bed. Sleep won. 

From then on it has been a struggle to get him into his own bed. We tried going from the crib to a "big boy" bed to get him excited. No dice. Then we tried bringing his bed into our room right by our bed to see if it was just about being in the same room as us. Nope. W tried a new "big boy" CAR bed. Totally exciting during the day, but same ordeal at night. He would either cry until I came and got him or would crawl right into our bed. At some point I just accepted the fact that we were a co-sleeping family. Then I got pregnant. 

Then the pressure was on! I had to get this child out of our bed before my nights were consumed by late night feedings and newborn coos and cries. All business now, I made a plan. It was ridiculously simple. 

• When he moves rooms, he gets a twin size bed.
• I will sleep in that twin size bed with him for about a week (I definitely resembled a zombie).
• For about a month I laid in his bed until he fell asleep and then went to my own bed (at this point he is still coming into our bed halfway through the night).
• Then for about two weeks I sat in a rocker next to his bed while he went down (this may have been the most important part as he learned to fall asleep holding a toy instead of a person).

I would often fall asleep in that rocker by his bed and always felt restless and awful when I woke up. One night I'd had it. We went through our normal routine to get ready for bed. I tucked him in. I looked him right in the eye and told him that I was going to go sleep in my bed while he slept in his. He looked super irritated at first but after we went through our goodnights, sweet dreams, and bed bugs talk he looked fine. I stepped away, left his lamp on, and left the door cracked. Done. Victory. Sweet sweet sleep. I woke up the next morning in pure disbelief and a little bit of panic. After I checked on him and realized that I wasn't dreaming I made myself not get my hopes up, but it's been weeks and he has slept soundlessly every single night! We even spent a night out of town at a relatives house and he slept in their grand-baby's room without any problem!

My advice for you is this:

1. Do not let your kiddo spend the night at anyone's house while your going through this process. It totally messes up the consistency.
2. Leave a nightlight or lamp on in the room all night long.
3. Provide your kiddo with a stuffed animal or let them choose a toy to take with them each night.
4. Try using music or white noise to camouflage any other noises that would usually make your kiddo stir. I like to run a diffuser with essential oils in it while he sleeps. It makes a very subtle hum.
5. Most importantly, do not let your kiddo think you will be in the room when he/she wakes up. I think the biggest difference we made was when I looked right at him and made it clear that he sleeps in his bed and I sleep in mine. End of story. He watched me leave his room (melted my heart) and I knew that he understood that I would not be in there when he woke up. So simple and logical that I can't believe we hadn't tried the straightforward approach before. 

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