THE SLEEP EXCHANGE

The Saturday night before mom and grandma came to visit (a little over 5 weeks ago), we moved Cora's crib into James' room. We wanted grandma to have a room to herself, without Cora waking her in the middle of the night. Boy were we ever surprised when Cora started sleeping through the night, the first night she was in James' room! Due to that lovely turn of events, we decided to leave her crib in there, at least until Jean's visit over Thanksgiving ended (a couple weeks later), so that Jean could likewise have a room to herself. Well, with a very few exceptions, Cora kept on sleeping through the night, and we kept on loving it. Therefore, when Jean left the weekend after Thanksgiving, we decided to just leave Cora in James' room until either of them start complaining about it, somebody starts sleeping poorly, or we decide to move Cora up from her crib into a regular bed. For now, it's working. And we still go by the motto "Whatever works!" around here. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Our theory is that since Cora had been continuing to wake up nightly, even though she stopped eating during the night over 6 months ago, she was waking up lonely and scared. Since moving into her big brother's room, if she wakes up she immediately sees him, and perhaps that security is all she needs to put herself back to sleep (quietly, since we never even hear her cry out anymore). So, it only took her 17 months to start sleeping through the night consistently (not counting that month between 3 and 4 months where she STTN every single night and tricked us into thinking we had a good sleeper again). I suppose that's still better than her mama's track record, since by all accounts I didn't sleep at ALL until I was at least 2-years-old. (My parents were troopers!)

(And as you can see, there is still plenty of room for the kids to play in James' room, and Cora's room has even more space to run and tunnel and roll and dance!)