ALICE TAKES CONTROL

Alice has a stinking cold, her nose is snotty and bunged up, she has a hacking cough, no appetite, no tolerance and is very easily reduced to tears. Not fun.

Sleep has been an issue for the last week or so - ever since the beginning of the week when this cold started showing. She's been slow to go to sleep in the evenings - demanding 'Mummy's bed!' and unsettled through the night, she's spent a significant amount of nearly every night in my bed and my sleep's suffered a lot because of her presence.

When sleep gets bad like this I establish my expectations before bedtime and talk Alice through what is going to happen (optimistically at the moment!)

Today she's been OK during the waking hours, but as soon as I started to leave her (in the usual way at bedtime) she started to cry. Despite reassurance and repeat visits to her the crying ramped up until she's hiccuping and snotty, still demanding 'Mummy's bed!' I wasn't giving in - whilst I don't mind her coming in with me occassionally it's happened too often this week and I'm really tired, I don't want to establish a bad habit and whilst it's painful for both of us if I refuse tonight it will only get harder the longer this goes on.

So I comprimised! Alice is now sleeping in the single 'big girl's bed' in her bedroom. Her cotbed is still a cot but I suspect that Alice won't accept it as a bed when there's a proper bed in the room, but because of the cot bed converts into a bed with protection rails I haven't bought guard rails for the other bed - thinking she'd graduate slowly, but (as is becoming usual) Alice knew better! It took her another 30 minutes or so to settle but for now she's asleep - I hope that I haven't lost my civilised morning starts in the process (I have a backup plan using yet another baby-gate if necessary!)