As I’m writing this, of all our family members, there is only one of us sleeping in his or her designated bedroom. That would be my six-year-old daughter. Except that she is sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor rather than her bed. Nevertheless, at least she is in her room. And will remain there for the entire night until she wakes up in the morning and hopefully cheerfully wakes up and says, “Hey Guys!” Or, if her allergies or eczema has caused her to toss and turn, will wake up as Ms. Crankypants and grumble, “What are we doing today???” with hands on hips and flaming arrows shooting out of her eyes.

Next would be my husband, who is sleeping peacefully in “the guest room,” except that he has been sleeping there for so many months that the girls have renamed it “Daddy’s room.” And the reason that he has been sleeping there for so long is…

My younger daughter, who just turned three, and has pretty much claimed our king-size bed as her own. At some point which is probably much too late, I will crawl into bed beside her and fall asleep, exhausted, or try in vain to sleep while fighting my insomniac tendencies. As my husband has told me many times before, I myself probably have the worst sleeping habits in our family!

And as I’ve mentioned before, we are somewhat accidental attachment parents. I did read The Baby Book by Dr. Sears before we adopted our older daughter, and found it helpful, but I wouldn’t say we were planning on religiously following an attachment parenting philosophy. In terms of sleep training, I also read (and tried to implement techniques from) Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child; The No-Cry Sleep Solution; The Sleep Lady’s Good Night, Sleep Tight; and Baby Wise, particularly with our youngest daughter.

Pretty much we failed at sleep training, not that we didn’t try it.

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I think it began with being somewhat naive first-time parents, with the added complexity of adopting our daughter from Korea. Not to say that all adoptive parents have had the same issues. I know many families who have successfully (and some easily!) sleep-trained their children once they brought them home.

HJ, who arrived at the orphanage at one day old, was basically rocked to sleep each night. Well, to be more accurate, she was wrapped in a po-dae-gi, a Korean blanket, and carried on her caregiver’s back old-school Korean style until she fell asleep. I don’t really know how her caregiver survived that first year. I remember when we first met HJ at the age of five months in Korea, and seeing first-hand how the caregiver walked her up and down the stairs of the orphanage for God knows how long until HJ fell asleep. She was also given a bottle of formula at about 2 a.m. in the morning every night. In addition to that, she was absolutely addicted to her pacifier. Then she was laid down on a mattress, while her caregiver slept on the floor next to her. They did have a crib, which had been bought specifically for her, but it remained pretty much untouched for the entire time HJ was at the orphanage. I would be the last person to judge, however, since we currently have a very nice Pottery Barn Kids sleigh crib that has also seen very little use in the past three years in our daughter’s room.


Lila’s practically unused crib/toddler bed. We had high hopes before reality hit!

When Lila was born, I was DETERMINED to sleep-train her. There were going to be no excuses this time around. We had tried everything with HJ, to no avail, but co-sleeping with two children was not going to cut it. What happened in reality was that HJ miraculously did start sleeping by herself once Lila was born. Most likely due to a combination of factors, including my husband sleeping with her as a transition, my own exhaustion from breastfeeding and caring for Lila, and just general timing and maturity. But for whatever reason, HJ was now the best sleeper in our house. I will admit that losing the pacifier was an added challenge, but that’s another story.

With Lila, all was going pretty well. For the first few months, she started in a bassinet by our bed, and I nursed her a few times during the night. Around three months we started transitioning her to her crib, and probably right around the age of four months she actually slept through the night. Once. And then, we had a completely unexpected family situation which made me suddenly decide that I could not deal with crying it out sleep-training at that time, and before we knew it, Lila was back in our bedroom. We tried on and off to do various sleep-training techniques as the months passed, but as with many other moments in our parenting journey, it just seemed that co-sleeping was the best thing for our family at the time.

Not that I’m losing all hope. Lila is three now. That’s the age when HJ started sleeping by herself. And I just recently read Mrs. Bee’s post on “When to Sleep Train” and saw that from age 3 to 3.5 years is actually a good time to sleep train. My first reaction when I saw that — I can’t believe it’s not too late!

If anyone has had success in sleep-training their older children, please let me know any tips you have. Though, at this point, I’ve become so used to being sleep-deprived that I know I’ll still survive even if, worst-case scenario, all four members of our family are sleeping in the same bed. I won’t be happy about it, but I know I’ll survive. Either that, or I’ll literally start dreaming about the day that I’ll have the entire king-size bed to myself!