Diary of the 500 Babies First Night Sleeping Together in the Same Room

7:45 PM
All children are in their respective beds. D. and M. are asleep, J. is still awake. Dad is at softball practice. Mom is not going to finish cleaning up the house from the day's activities because she needs to be able to hear the babies and how can she do that if she is clanging dishes around? She is forced to work on the computer because that is a quiet activity.

8:15 PM
M. wakes up. Mom pats her back and within 5 minutes she is asleep again. J. is still awake. D. is snoring.

9:20 PM
J. FINALLY falls asleep. To his credit, he was laying quietly in bed the whole time.

9:30 PM
M. wakes up again. Her crying wakes up D. and J., who quickly fall back asleep once she's quiet. It takes about 20 minutes to get M. to fall asleep again. Incidentally, Mom and Dad learn it also takes about 20 minutes for Kix to get soggy.

M. wakes up at 10:00 and again at 10:20. Once she's asleep, Mom and Dad decide to take a chance and go to bed at 10:30, making bets on when she will wake up again. Loser makes the coffee in the morning.

2:30 AM
M. wakes up. Mom and Dad are shocked she has slept for 4 hours.

3:30 AM
M. wakes up with a leaky diaper. After being changed, she now thinks it's time to play and takes 30 minutes to go back to sleep.

5:00 AM
D. randomly wakes up. Dad gives him his pacifier and he goes back to sleep.

8:00 AM
M. wakes up ready for the day. Mom and Dad are again shocked she has slept for 4 hours. J. was also awake but was still in his toddler bed.

She did a lot better than we expected. The dilemma is that we don't want her to get used to being picked up every time she cries in bed, but we also don't want her to wake up the boys. We expect it will take time, but it will be better for everyone in the long run if she can sleep by herself.