Wednesday day 8: Zoey slept in her crib again last night. When I took her up for her nap and started to put her in her crib, she wiggled and whined in my arms and said, "crib, bed, diffent." She's a little confused about the names right now, but after clarifying, I knew she didn't want to nap in her crib. I told her ok, but that she has to stay in bed. I told her that if she climbs out, I'm gonna put her in her crib. She didn't try to climb out. She just laid there snuggled in her blanket til she fell asleep a couple minutes later and I snuck out of the room. She woke up an hour and a half later, turned off her heater and fan, and came downstairs all by herself. I really like the part where I don't have to go upstairs to get her out of her crib. By bedtime though, she didn't want to sleep in her bed. She wanted her crib. I wish I knew why.
*update* Since March 10th (about 3 weeks ago and 3 weeks after her first night in her bed) I have documented that Zoey had slept the night in her bed 10 times and has taken 6 naps there. I'm thinking that she has done a couple more that I didn't get documented, but we'll go with that. 16 out of 46 sleep times, she slept in her big girl bed. We tried being strict about it for a couple of days; to just remove the choice to sleep in her crib and be very firm about staying in her bed, but that seemed to cause a lot of contention before falling asleep, which kind of defeats the purpose, so we backed off a little. Lately we have been placing her straight in her bed without asking. Almost every time she will ask for her crib, but sometimes if we just ignore it and continue on, she won't push it or ask any more. When she does push harder for the crib and tries to climb out of the bed, then we don't fight her. We let her have her way; and she gets to sleep in her crib for the next few hours.
It may not be a quick fix, but that's not what we need right now. I just want her to feel comfortable and safe. I think that once we stopped making it such a big deal and eased up on both Zoey and ourselves, the process went very smoothly. When Zoey willingly sleeps in her bed, she always stays there the whole time till morning or till she feels rested enough from her nap. She doesn't fight me when I leave the room, and she wakes up happy. We have only done about 3 nights in a row at this point, but she is becoming more and more accustomed to this being a permanent thing. I'm proud of her so far! Change can be very hard.
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