Holly slept in a crib next to my side of the bed from the day she was born until she was nearly 5 months old. As we did when Lara reached about the same age, we moved Holly into her own cot at the point when her arms and legs were bashing against the sides of the crib. Despite using Bumpsters to protect her little arms and legs, Holly seemed able to reach an arm out and poke me in the leg each morning!
I had been hoping to delay Holly's move into the cot until Lara was ready to move out of her cotbed. There was no way that I was going to invest in a new bed and mattress for Lara until she was successfully sleeping through the night without accidents. We are close (we only have to wake her up once now) but not close enough that we could offer Holly the cotbed to sleep in. Thankfully the MIL and SIL came to the rescue with a hand-me-down cot which, quite spookily, matches the changing unit in Holly's nursery! Then all I had to do was fork out for one of our biggest nursery expenses... a mattress. I have been so impressed with Lara's Mothercare waterproof mattress with Spacetec and Coolmax (they sound scientific, don't they!) that I wanted to buy Holly exactly the same mattress but with a price tag of £140 this involved me selling my own soul on ebay (along with newborn baby products we bought and never used and a fine selection of baby clothes).
After a few weekends putting off the inevitable, we finally got around to preparing the nursery. Mr. B. suddenly discovered an eagerness to construct the cot when it occurred to him that moving Holly out of our bedroom might re-ignite my interest in him at bedtimes rather than Holly! It is a bit cramped in the nursery now with barely any room to stand but it isn't a long term thing - I would like both girls to share a bedroom eventually and I won't need a comfy breastfeeding chair in the nursery for ever (I hope).
And so the day finally came. Holly quite obediently fell asleep about an hour earlier than normal and we popped her into her cot. It was the first time we had taken her up to bed before going to bed ourselves and when Mr. B came back downstairs we both felt at a bit of a loss as to what we should do next. A strong drink and CSI Miami did the trick nicely!
It felt weird and quiet without Holly in our room that night but my, it felt good. The big space in our room where the crib had been now felt huge and airy - I even did a little dance just to prove how spacious it was! I've slept really soundly since Holly moved out of our room but I still wake the instant that Holly wakes up and I'm up like a flash into her room to feed her. Holly sleeps brilliantly too and we haven't had any problems getting her to settle in her new room.
