The trickiest bit to parenting, in my opinion, is training the kids to sleep on. their. own. by. themselves. And it’s not just the toughest battle but the most arduous. Even with advice aplenty out there – sleep coaching, crying it out, no tears approach – it’s usually easier said than done. When Ben was born, fatherkao and I decided to preserve the sanctity of our bed and so we agreed that we will never co-sleep with our kids on our bed. I ended up co-sleeping in Ben’s room instead. I gave up running in and out whenever I heard the baby monitor, so we bought a sofa bed that I could sleep on in the nursery. That worked out quite fine because the husband got his rest and I could get my son to relieve much of the engorgement I had suffered in the night. Even when I found out I was pregnant with Becks and no longer had milk supply, I did the co-sleeping thing still because I was a needy mother, and being with my son at night had become more of an addiction to fix my withdrawal symptoms which I had earlier suffered in the day at work.

When I was pregnant again, we needed the cot for the second baby. So we hurried Ben’s graduation from cot to bed by (making the huge mistake of) buying him a bunk bed, thinking that it would make him want to sleep in it and on his own. Even with a funky fire-engine for a bed, he would be found on the sofa bed with a very pregnant me in the middle of the night. I was too exhausted to put him back to his bed every time he came down, and if I ever did so, I would have spent more time waking than sleeping, really. The plan was to hang on in there until the baby was born because I needed to give him as much assurance as I could (he was only nine months when I was preggers again) and fatherkao would take start training him while I co-sleep with the other baby.

But who would’ve known that fatherkao would suffer a sports injury so bad one month after our daughter’s birth that he had to be wheelchair-bound for the next eight months. I was back to co-sleeping, this time with two needy babies. That period was the darkest for me. The husband wasn’t mobile and needed care; Ben was bewildered and insecure with the changes at home, and Becks was a screamy bundle of terror. We huddled on the sofa bed every night for a year.

When fatherkao recovered and became mobile again, we attempted to proceed with the plan. Co-sleep with Becks but at least train Ben to sleep on his own, alone in his room. Stay with him till he sleeps. And when he does, come back to the master bedroom. Unfortunately, whoever puts him to bed hardly returns, largely due to extreme exhaustion.

We recently graduated Becks from cot to junior bed (a month before Nat was born). The two children are now sleeping with fatherkao in the same room. I am sleeping with Nat. Three years have come  and gone, and still, Ben cannot sleep without one of us being around. He can’t even just go to sleep with his sister in the same room. It’s like, he has the ability to feel the parent-presence. The moment that presence is gone, he is awake. And strangely, this ability is genetic. His sister has that power too. That is why when fatherkao wakes up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, you will usually also hear two kids whimpering / whining / moaning, “I want Dada!”.

I’ve been quick to blame myself for never really training the two of them with all the methods that I’ve read about from parenting books. Good thing is, my children usually don’t have problems falling asleep as the routine is pretty much set: dinner, warm bath, bit of TV or story-telling, milk, brushing teeth, a prayer and some songs, and they’ll soon be drifting off to slumberland. But to ensure they stay there for an uninterrupted length of time, there must be the parent-presence. Take it away and you will see two jokers in pajamas suddenly wide awake asking why you aren’t in the room with them. Sometimes, if I’m the one doing the tucking in, Ben wants me to hold his hand. He says I must hold it at all times. This afternoon, I tried taking my hand away from his after an hour. That promptly ended his nap.

I’m kinda at a loss right now as to how we should proceed with this sleep training thing with three kids. I don’t have a big enough house with rooms to lock every kid in and try the CIO method. Neither do I have the money to hire a sleep coach to train my kids to sleep without the parent-presence. I guess I may have to settle for all five of us huddling on the sofa bed someday.

Or perhaps, finally giving in and letting everyone loose (*gasp*) on our bed in the master bedroom. And then when the kids are finally asleep, we’ll dress two bolsters up with our clothes, play a broken record of sorts of our breathing and sneak into the children’s room and sleep together (finally) on the sofa bed.

Sounds like a plan to me.