Six hours

He didn't wake up at 4! He slept until 7. SIX HOURS! (I still had to get up at 6, but that's beside the point.) I was alarmed to see him sleeping on his belly with his face nearly flattened into the mattress. He had a little bit of nostril exposed, through which he was breathing. He insists on sleeping on his side or his belly. This distresses me. I keep a night light on so that I can look at him during the night to see if his face is buried. His mattress is a firm foam, and it is directly on the floor next to mine. He can see me so he feels safe. If he rolls off the mattress, since he is now such a squirmer, he may startle himself, but he won't hurt himself. Last night was his first night on this new mattress. When we tried the crib, he couldn't see over the bumpers so I removed them. He likes to be able to see me, and I'm okay with that. Then he got his feet stuck between the rails, and could have hurt himself trying to get unstuck, so I decided I don't want him sleeping in the crib. It's baby jail anyway. The feng shui of those vertical bars can't be good. We have a play pen cot that we used for a little while, but he is so long that he barely has any room to maneuver. Sometimes he feels cold when I pick him up, too, and I can't put him into snuggly blankets for the suffocation hazard. I think the thin mattress and airspace beneath it contribute to the cold. I know that when I've been camping and slept on a raised cot with a thin mattress, I got too cold myself. We also tried the crib mattress on the floor, but it isn't much surface area and he rolled off and scared himself. It's also slippery since it's vinyl covered, and with all his squirming, the mattress can move and open up a gap for him to get wedged in, potentially. All these sleep hazards. I gave up on the Amby hammock when he started squirming so much. He would roll nearly over and wedge his face into the hammock sides, which alarmed me. I emailed Amby about this and they assured me he would be fine and able to breathe, and they've never had a baby suffocate in their hammock. Even so, I wasn't comfortable with the idea, and he is so long that he nearly pokes out the end of the hammock anyway. My Boo is a supersized baby. He is off the charts in length and weight. He's more the size of a normal two year old; not an 8 month old. He's spent many nights in between us, since he's been demanding food at 1 and 4 for so long. Sometimes I'm too exhausted to put him back in his own bed-space. He likes sleeping with us. But he's a bed hog! He kicks and pokes and seems to jab my aching boobs with such precision as to inflict the most discomfort, like an expert marksman. How he manages this, I do not know. I love snuggling with him, I admit. But I think that it will be good for him to become accustomed to sleeping on his own mattress. This new arrangement may work. Hopefully, once I'm through the paranoia of him suffocating in the night, which may be when he's mastered rolling over and back again and sitting himself up and possibly crawling, and when I've gotten him to sleep consistently without needing to be fed at 1 a.m., then I will gently encourage him to learn to sleep in his own room. I want him to learn independence, but I also want him to know that he can trust me completely for all things at all times. This will be very important later in his life, when he's a teenager or preteen and faced with making some choices that might not be in his best interest. I want him to know that I am here for him, no matter what. I would have liked to have had that trust in and with my parents.