I sleep with my baby, not my husband, how about you?

We brought Sienna's crib with us for our year in London, luckily it folds up quite small, and since we had every intention of actually, finally using it, why wouldn't we bring it? We would absolutely love our baby to sleep in her own bed and keeping her crib around gives us a glimmer of hope that some day she might, perhaps, possibly, hopefully sleep in it! Apparently the only thing standing right in the way of her making this milestone is ME. I am just way too much of a first time mom.... I continue to refuse my needs of a good nights sleep and a snuggle with my husband; even though I have heard myself saying "lets just put her in the crib! I can't take this anymore, she's all up in my grill!" I still cannot break down and put her in her bed and let her cry herself to sleep... (a terrifying prospect).... Needless to say she has now become so used to sleeping in our bed that if we even put her in her crib for five seconds she goes ballistic! She senses the difference in texture, that new-crib-smell that just won't go away! and of course the lack of milk lying right next to her, "woah, woah, where am I, where are the boobs!? This is not their bed! Nice try assholes, I'm staying in your bed forever!!"  

There was a time, several months ago, when Sienna would sleep in her crib for the first few hours of the night but when she woke up and wanted a little snack she always ended up sleeping right smack in the middle of us for the rest of the night. At this point she wasn't much of a mover and a shaker, she would just lay on her back in one position... I thought "this is easier than trying to get her to go to sleep and put her back in her crib!" Boy was I wrong...

Now, she sleeps like she was fighting in Nam and has post-traumatic stress disorder... She has these whimpering fits, possibly nightmares from the battlefields, which keep me wide awake, she ends up losing her soother at least 5 times and screaming for boob, she sleeps diagonally with her toes in my mouth, or with her claws digging into my jugular, I wake up to screams and find she has been smacking her head against the wall in the crawling position whilst rocking back and forth, and finally, after a rough night of little sleep, I wake up to find Sienna's bum in the air with her palms firmly on her most prized posession... my boobs whilst smiling and cooing away, as if she has had the best sleep of her life! I envy that little one....

If only I had listened to Kyle when Sienna was just three months old... "We should really put her in her crib now, she's going to be in our bed forever!" I only had one train of thought from the beginning... "what if she stopped breathing, or spat up and we didn't notice!!!" That very first night at home from the hospital I couldn't fall asleep because I just wanted to hear her breathing, watch her chest move up and down and be right next to her just in case she woke up... I am now convinced that Sienna will be in our bed until she is fifteen and our second baby will be locked in its OWN room and in its OWN crib the day we get home from the hospital... of course we will have a video monitor strategically placed in its nursery, and I will sleep with one eye on the baby cam! 

Now the crib is a laundry basket... All of our clean clothes end up in there, folded and ready to be put away, along with the beautiful quilt Auntie Carleigh made for Sienna that she is not allowed to touch as I am afraid of her getting it dirty ;) Every time I walk into our bedroom and look to my left, I see a fortress built around our child (a similar purpose a crib fulfills!) and then I look forwards and see the crib teasing me, laughing, "you fool! you could easily have used me and been having sleep-full nights by now!"

I am doomed to listen to Sienna's whimpers right in my ear and snores from the other side of the bed for the rest of my life...