.Sleep.

It's the first question everyone asks when you have a baby "how ya sleepin'?". My answer is a complicated one.
We co-sleep. Yes like in bed with me co-sleep. We do in fact have an Arms Reach Co-Sleeper {which I highly recommend} but after weeks of both of us waking up fully every 2 hours so that she can nurse I gave up out of pure exhaustion and brought her into bed with me so that I can side-nurse her and suddenly every person in our house was getting plenty of sleep. Of course now she refuses to move back to her co-sleeper and the other people that share the bed {husband & dog} are so very over the nightly group party.
The thing is, I had always expected the sleeping issue to be the same as it was with Amelia. Not because they are sisters and therefore the same, but because I naively thought "a baby is a baby is a baby". Not even close. Alice's temperament is so totally different from her sisters and what works for one absolutely does not work for the other, not just with sleep but since it's the subject of this post it's the example I'm using. Amelia is my headstrong independent bull-headed firecracker who is more than happy to do something simply because you think she can't. Go down the big slide? Sure. Eat that spicy dish? Hell yes. Sleep by yourself? Not only yes, but bring on the darkened me-time!
Alice on the other hand is all softness and her only goals in life are to make you smile and a good cuddle. Being alone, even in a bassinet 8 inches from my own head is not something to overcome {as it was with Amelia} but pure lonely heartbreak. So of course what worked for the first child just seems cruel with this one. Plus it doesn't work.
So I have gone back and am re-reading Elizabeth Pantely's "No-Cry Sleep Solutions" book. It's the same one I read when Amelia was being "sleep trained" and it worked for our family. Reading it through the first time I skipped over things areas that didn't apply to us, this time I'm doing the same only they're the opposite parts. A few things have really rang true when reading through again especially the section on purposely holding back because I as a mother am not totally ready. While it's true that I would love to sleep deeply again {I only fall into the lightest of sleeps to make sure she's always safe} or to sleep on my stomach, or spread out, or even lay next to my husband again - I'm just as much sad at the idea of losing that time with her.
There is of course the bonding that you get every time you nurse your baby but for me that is taken a step further in those quiet hours in the middle of the night when it's just the two of us while the rest house sleeps. I'm not rushed or splitting my attention between a million things, it's slow and peaceful; the only quiet reflecting time that I get to just savor her babyness most days. They grow so so fast, something I didn't fully appreciate last time. She's our last baby and everything she does, every minute with her feels like a swan song. And so, I snuggle in with her each night knowing that it's one less night of holding a baby to me and I don't feel any great urge to rush that more than time already naturally does.
There will be a whole lifetime of her sleeping on her own, for now we each need this - for overlapping reasons.
So, I'm taking it slow. Much more so than I did with Amelia and everyone {Cheyenne, Amelia, Alice, the dog, my own nagging insides} will just need to forgive me and let me do it my way.