Weaning my two-year-old and getting her out of my bed

Longtime readers would never have thought these would be problems I’d have, right? Not with my crib-sleeping, resolutely non-nursing child? It’s been a surprise to me, too, I assure you. But some things happened around the time Little Girl turned two.

First a large variety of my friends had newborns, and Little Girl was cruelly denied the opportunity to hold them while they were being nursed, which frustrated her to no end, as did my holding the babies, and these negative emotions seem to have been sublimated into a recurring and extensive fantasy of being, herself, a baby, “goo goo gah gah” babbling included. She likes to feign helplessness, waving little fists in the air while fake-crying. She does this whenever she wants to pretend not to understand instructions or scolding, or in uncertain social situations, like our toddler fitness class occasionally, where she’ll stretch out on the floor while the other kids are jumping around her. (When she’s not pretending to be a baby, she’ll often do puppy and kitty impressions instead. She’s rather good.)

And sometimes, after seeing a baby nurse, or even watching a friend of mine pump, Little Girl has tried to climb up under my shirt to figure out what I am going on about when I am talking about these little babies drinking milk from their mommies. I’ve told her Mommy’s milk is long gone (and you will be pleased to know I have heroically refrained from extensive lecturing about how she totally missed the boat on nursing, and how I wish she had taken such a keen interest several years ago, as nine months of pumping is not my idea of a good time, and she would have saved Mommy a lot of trouble), but she has wanted to make sure. Little Girl doesn’t like to miss out on snacks other children are getting, after all. This interest in investigating nursing waxes and wanes depending on seeing nursing babies, so honestly I am, quite selfishly, kind of happy that most of my friends are no longer breastfeeding their newest crop of babies.

And the sleeping. She used to sleep very nicely in her crib, and from a very early age, with no prodding from me, but I guess she decided she didn’t want to fall asleep on her own anymore, and got smart enough to convince us she didn’t have to, so now I have to sit on a little footstool beside her bed every night until she falls asleep. It usually only takes a few minutes–since she doesn’t nap, she’s usually very ready for bed–and I can tell she’s asleep when her breathing gets louder, moving to a sweet range somewhere between a purr and a snore. Adorable. And she’ll usually turn over one last time before finally falling into slumber, and she can suck her thumb in her sleep. It’s sort of been enjoyable to learn these things about her.

However, I think my helping her get to sleep now has led to her being uninterested in putting herself back to sleep on the occasions (a few nights a week) she awakens in the middle of the night. Now she calls for Mommy, and wants Mommy to sit with her, but Mommy doesn’t feel like sitting around on footstools in the dark for indefinite periods of time at 3 AM, so Mommy takes her to bed, where everyone goes right back to sleep. This isn’t extremely bothersome, really–she hardly kicks me at all anymore, especially if I wedge a pillow between us!–and has decreased since I started making a big deal out of it on the mornings when she wakes up in her own bed (now she often reports it to me upon waking that she’s in the crib, “no Mommy’s bed”). And I like to have someone with me when I’m falling asleep, too (as long as they are utterly silent and don’t try to, like, touch me, or block my way to the bathroom), so I can hardly fault her for it. But I would prefer her at least to spend the majority of her sleeping hours in her own bed, if only because then there’s no risk of my having to change my sheets because somebody soaked them in pee.

I planned to nurse, and she didn’t go with it. I planned to co-sleep, but we bothered each other. I thought these issues were all sewed up, and here they’ve popped back. Children. One weird situation after another. At least I am always armed with anecdotes.