One of the most daunting moments in my four-plus years of parenting thus far was the first time I had to tackle bedtime alone, with both kids. I was lucky?my husband was almost always home before 7 pm to help with our three-year-old, while I was frequently stuck on the couch nursing our newborn. But eventually, one of you wants to go out at night, and you can?t find a sitter. Or someone has to work late unexpectedly. I needed to be able to manage double bedtime on my own.
I knew how to deal with the witching hours, how to diffuse a raging threenager?s tantrums, and how to function (albeit just barely) at 6 am after a typical night of broken sleep, feeding an infant every two hours. And yet, I STILL couldn?t figure out double bedtime. The baby usually needed to eat exactly when I should have been making dinner. Or I?d leave him napping peacefully in his Rock ?n Play, then hustle upstairs to put the three-year-old to bed, and inevitably the baby would start wailing in the middle of bedtime stories, interrupting us exactly when I wanted to give my older son some one-on-one attention. My attempts always seemed to end in meltdowns: two crying, tired kids and a teary, frustrated mom.
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