Ghetto Crib

There are lots of things that childless parents say about those that do have children. "I'll never do THAT...", "My child would never do/say/act like THAT...","I would never buy THAT...", etc., etc. Then, the magical day happens when your baby is born and suddenly all of that goes out the window and you are doing all of THAT and more!

Case in point; the ghetto crib. What exactly is the ghetto crib?!? Well, most of you blog readers know that we've been struggling for some time now, with getting our now-one year old to sleep IN her crib, by HERSELF. Every time Katy would fall asleep and we'd try to transfer her to the crib she'd instantly wake up and we'd have to start the whole getting-to-sleep routine all over again. Or, we'd successfully transfer her to her crib only to be awoken by her cries an hour later. We'd do it again and again, finally succumbing in the wee hours of the morning to pulling Katy into bed with us just so that we could get some sleep, too instead of getting up, down and not being able to fall back to sleep.

Introduce a plain, old mattress on the floor, baby gate around it, pillows on all sides and voila (!), the ghetto crib is born! I can actually get Katy to fall asleep in the "crib"(by herself!) AND she stays asleep for several consecutive hours. Granted, it's not always uninterrupted sleep, but it's a VAST improvement to no sleep at all!

Getting back to the "I'll nevers..." Experts say not to put pillows, blankets, stuffed animals in the bed with a child as they pose suffocation risks. Experts say not to co-sleep. Well, sometimes, I wonder if these "experts" every really had any children because sometimes, you just need to do what works for you and your child. Don't worry, Katy is safe- we check on her regularly and she's old enough to be able to roll over and remove anything that might cause a breathing problem. Also, the ghetto crib goes against every grain in my interior designer body- it's not pretty but it works!

I'd post a picture of the ghetto crib except Katy is sleeping and I'm not waking her up... ;-P