Toddler Containment Units

Sleep has been a precious commodity around here ever since the girls were born. When they first came home from the hospital, we religiously put them down in their cribs drowsy, but awake. It worked pretty well until they hit their due date and Eve became posessed by demons. Or developed colic. Most likely it was the latter, but I can't imagine things would have been worse with the demons. Either way, she had a wicked case of acid reflux and also started becoming more aware of the world around her, and more unable to shut out excess stimulus.

She fought sleep like nothing I've ever seen. She would get more and more and more wound up, and was obviously exhausted, but just would not sleep. We finally figured out that the fastest way to get her to sleep was to swaddle her tightly, take her in a dark room, switch on the vacuum cleaner, and rock her to sleep. She would scream and scream and scream for a while, then finally relax, then finally drop off. Sometimes you'd get lucky and it would only take 15 minutes. Sometimes it would take 45. We would creep gently up the stairs, and lay her in her crib as carefully as possible. If she woke up at any point during the transfer, you would have to start all over again. So we started rocking Lily and Julia to sleep too, because Lord help you if you put one of them down awake and they fussed enough to wake up Eve.

So we did this ridiculous dance every night. Often Eve was the first to go down, so then one of us would take a baby into the guest bath and one into the master bath (neither has a window, so they're both dark), rock them to sleep, then creep down the hall to the nursery to deposit sleeping babies in their cribs. On average it probably took us 45 minutes a night just to get everyone in bed. The slightest noise from the baby monitor would send us flying up the stairs to remove the offender from the room before everyone woke up and we had to start all over.

At around 8 or 9 months old, Eve finally started to outgrow the reflux, the colic, the demons, whatever you want to call it. One night when my mom was visiting, she decided to just put Eve down in her crib awake and give her a pacifier to see what would happen. She fell asleep on her own, no crying at all. Same thing every night for a week straight. She had a short relapse the next week, but that was really the end of it. So then we decided to see what would happen if we just put all three of them down awake at the same time. There was some minor fussing on and off for about 20 minutes, then silence. Next night it was 10 minutes. And the next night just a minute or two.

I don't think I can overstate to you how much this changed our lives for the better. Around this time too they finally started getting on a regular nap schedule, and more importantly, napping at the same time. FINALLY we could count on having a little break during day. Getting them all to fall asleep at nap time became a little more challenging as they got older, but they were stuck in their cribs and almost always would eventually fall asleep. If someone is particularly stubborn we'll move her to the isolation booth: a Pack & Play we keep set up in our guest room.

I am sorry this is getting so long-winded, but I'm telling you all this so you understand the hell we went to in order to get a good sleep routine going, and the level of panic I therefore experienced when Julia fell out of her crib about a month ago. The nanny called to tell me it happened, and the first thing she said was Julia was perfectly fine, so I wasn't panicked about Julia's well-being (sorry, Julia). I panicked because I had totally counted on keeping them in cribs until they were... oh, I don't know, five, maybe? What? Is that too long?

We wrote it off as an isolated incident until Eve started showing signs of climbing out. Signs like throwing a leg over the rail and hoisting herself up as if she was straddling a bike. We decided to bite the bullet and switch over to big-girl beds. And then I had a really bad day when I couldn't get them to take a nap even though they were stuck in their cribs, and I had a minor breakdown at the thought of what would happen if they could get out and run around whenever they wanted. So we bought crib tents:

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Now they are well and truly stuck in those cribs, and can't climb out. Tim had the genius idea of telling the girls they were forts. We showed the girls the picture on the box and made a big huge deal about how we were making forts on their beds and they got to sleep in a fort from now on and just how cool is THAT?!?! We also gave them pillows and I made blankets for them out of fleece material they got to pick out themselves. Fortunately they bought it, and they love their forts. And I've noticed they're settling down for naps more quickly now, probably because they can't see each other as well through the mesh.

Maybe when they are 3 we'll be brave enough to face toddler beds. Maybe.

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