oh...sleep...
The first 4 years were very rough. As a new born the ONLY way my son would sleep was laying on his stomach. From the first hour, he screamed himself sick if put on his back. On his side occasionally worked but only for cat naps of 15-20 minutes. As a result he slep with DH and I for the first 6 months all the time. His favorite position where he would sleep for about 2 hours was on his stomach on top of either DH's or my chest. I think our heartbeats soothed him.
Needless to say, this appalled most everyone that knew about it especially the Drs who kept talking about smothering and how many children die in a family bed. Well meaning family and friends convinced us to give the CIO approach a try when he was about 6 months old. Since he could easily turn himself over, crawl and sit -up by then, we thought maybe it would work. Like some other posters, what happened was that he would cry to the point of throwing up and having an asthma attack. That didn't last more than a couple tries.
At 12 months he would climb out of the crib... I refused to make the crib a cage so we put the mattress on the floor and tried that. Well, he wasn't willing to STAY on the mattress and kept running out of his room to see what we were doing for hours after bedtime. I figured he was getting too much sleep with the madatory naps at daycare (later found out, he didn't nap there either). I ended up being one of those Mom's carting the toddler to the grocery store or Walmart at 11:oo at night hoping to get him sleepy in the car. The bright lights at the stores seemed to help also.
For the next 2-3 years, either DH or I would go up and read to him then lay with him until he fell asleep. Most nights we ended up sleeping on his floor because we would fall asleep before him.
Around 6 he decided he could go to bed in his room by himself at a reasonable time. Even now at almost 9, we have to get him going to bed with lots of protests though. He often wakes in the night. Doesn't seem to be nightmares, just wakes up and then stays awake for a couple hours thinking. Sometimes he comes and gets us, but most of the time, I only know he woke up because the bathroom light is on.
Ahh yes, letting him go to bed with a book doesn't work well if we want him to sleep. I remember a couple months ago, I let him go to bed with a book. Then I dosed off myself and forgot to go tell him to turn out his light. Around 2:00 AM he came in and asked if it was ok to start a new book... He had finished the book (easily 400+ pages) and was ready to read more. At least it wasn't a school night :P
