Confessions of Bad Mommy

I have a dirty little secret.

It's embarrassing. But here we go:

We're still putting Miles in the swing for naps. In fact, he's in there right now, snoozing away. But the batteries are almost kaput and we have no more in the house, so we're at this crossroads - again - we've been here before and chickened out - do we buy more batteries or retire the damn thing?

I think he's nearing the weight limit, and really, it is ridiculous - he's 9 months old. But he sleeps soooo well in there! We're talking 2 hour morning naps sometimes, and not a peep of protest. It's so easy. I can shower. I can get some laundry done. I can have a little time to myself. I'm so not ready to give it up, and Mr. Ibis... well, he might get lucky in that he might not be home with the baby while I work anymore because they're changing his shifts. But he is more terrified than I am of not having the swing for naps.

We tried for a little while to do without it, but we were putting him up on our bed. Once he got really mobile that was no longer safe. We now have his crib side-carred to the bed, which is safer at night and gives us all more room to sleep (shut up, Anonymous!), but it's still not safe to the point where I can leave him upstairs alone.

The pack & play... is impossible. He'll sometimes play in there for a little bit but if I put him down to nap or leave him playing for more than 10 minutes he starts up this tragic scene of standing up holding onto the rail and HEAVING fake sobs like he's been abandoned forever. I know it's not hurting him, but it's not helping him sleep, either. At Judy's she was trying to get him down in a pack & play and he would just stay up forever. So it's not just old mushy me that can't do it.

At Judy's he barely naps, which is part of what scares me. She put her swing in storage months ago and basically Miles just stopped taking a morning nap over there. It's not that he doesn't need it, because a couple of times I have picked him up early, in the late morning, and he was obviously exhausted, rubbing his eyes, whining. But she tries to put him down and he won't sleep until he's completely delirious. Then she gets him down by putting him on a big blanket on the floor, which I guess approximates being on our bed maybe. So I might try to set up something like that. But I'm not too fond of the idea of waiting until after lunch for his first nap of the day.

Yesterday I had to bring him over there in the afternoon so I could go to some meetings for two hours. He was due for a nap when I dropped him off, but of course he wouldn't go down for her. When I picked him up it was dinnertime, and as he was sitting in his high chair eating he was literally nodding out over his food, he was that tired. I don't like letting him get to that point - it doesn't seem healthy - but I'm afraid that's what I'll end up with when we ditch the swing completely. The only other place he naps well is in the Ergo, but I can't have him on my back that much every single day. So I'm just kind of stuck.