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Last Updated: Nov 14, 2008 - 12:49:26 PM |
You awaken with a start to the urgent cry for Mommy. Obviously, he has been calling you for quite some time, because as soon as you blink the sleep from your eyes, a stuffed Cookie Monster is propelled at you with such force you have to immediately duck for cover. Torpedoed in the middle of the night, waking to find a pacifier, and all of this your fault. He is two years old and still sleeping in your bedroom.
When all of this began (about the time the crib was purchased), the plan was for him to be in his own perfectly decorated nursery by six months of age. No matter that the nursery was upstairs and five thousand miles away, he was to be in his own room by then; that was the goal. However, there needed to be some work done upstairs before you would allow your precious bundle to sleep up there. It was to be the perfect shade of yellow, absolutely no dust, and it had to have an ironclad gate at the top of the stairs that even Einstein would have trouble getting open. Let the work begin for your poor husband.
Six months goes by faster than you can blink, and you just can’t bring yourself to move the baby upstairs. He would be alone; what if he were to cry, and what if the apocalypse comes? You say to yourself that he will be in his own room by his first birthday. You feel better now you bought yourself six months. Yet you do begin to feel a little ashamed whenever your friends come over and see the crib still in your room. The grandmothers begin to provide a running commentary on the situation, and your husband would love some alone time with you. You start think that something is wrong; why can’t you just move him upstairs?
The process has to start slowly for your sake. The first step is the death-defying ascent up the stairs. Will you make it to the top? What if you freeze when you get there? Who will rescue you from the peak of this mountain known as mother’s guilt and shame? Okay, you made it. Now you look around, scanning the room for hazards that have yet to present themselves. Is the railing up on the crib; are the covers too heavy; where is the smoke detector? You could have sworn there was one up here. As you take a deep breath and look for more evidence of danger, you realize something: your child is fast asleep in his crib. While you were busy looking for reasons to keep him with you, he quietly went to sleep. Obviously, it is you who is having issues here. Can we never let go? Will we worry until our dying day about these children whom we love so much? Finally, he is upstairs and sleeping soundly every night, safely tucked in with the gate locked and Cookie Monster snuggled in beside him. And you are sleeping surprisingly well yourself – except maybe the volume is a little high on the baby monitor, but hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
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