Feeling like a bad mum for NOT letting my baby cry...

[Melly01]

After being at university over the last year, and meeting a lot of mothers who are doing similar courses to me, I have always had the same response to my parenting styles.. "You're spoiling him!" "you're making a rod for your own back!" "He's never going to be able to sleep in his own bed without a fight."

Well, I proved them wrong. Logan has been co sleeping with me since he was very young.. He had a few months where he wanted to sleep in his own cot, but for the most part he would get so upset if he wasn't sleeping with me. After we got back from a trip to visit his dad & that side of the family a few weeks ago, he was helping me clean up his room, then he had dinner, a bath, and put himself to bed in his toddler bed! He took a book for me to read to him, and a tractor which he just drove over his lap while i read the book. Then he took the book was "reading" it to himself, I left the room to check on something and when I came back 5 minutes later he was fast asleep. That is how it has basically been since, some nights we have nights where he wants a cuddle on the sofa until he falls asleep. But then I carry him to his bed, he wakes up as I put him in , he says "bye Mummy" and then rolls over and goes back to sleep. He knows if he wakes up in the middle of the night he can come into my bed. My new bf is happy for him to come into my bed if he needs to when bf is staying (which is only 1 night a week anyway). Even ex wasn't happy having Logan in our bed with us, and Logan is his son..

I am so happy with how I handled everything. I must admit I do miss him in my bed, but I do enjoy having my room to myself some nights, and it's a wonderful feeling waking up to Logan climbing in to my bed saying "Mummy, cuddles..". I am so proud of Logan, all I ever wanted was for him to do it on his own terms and he has, he chose when he would start using his toddler bed and I think that has made all the difference.

I just wanted to say all of this because I used to feel like a bad mother for not letting him cry.. Like, if so many people I know go on & on about how good CC is (which personally I disagree with that, I say to them "Why would I want to make him cry when I know exactly what is wrong and what will fix it?") and I could never do it, maybe there was something wrong with me.. But I just think they have their ideas and I have mine, if I compromise myself and go against what Logan wants, then how happy will I be with the result? Even if I had done CC and gotten the result I wanted, would I feel unhappy because of what I had to do to get it?