Not everything goes as planned

When you become a parent you quickly realize that there are tons of decisions you have to make just to get started:

Breastmilk or formula? Scheduled feedings or on cue?

Cloth diapers or disposables? What brand?

Stroller or baby wearing?

Vaccinations? All of them? Some of them? Delayed or on schedule?

Your general parenting style? Traditional or Attachment Parenting?

And those are just a few...

Some were no-brainers. 

There was no question that I would breastfeed and that Ace would wear Pampers. Being a working mom, I was more than happy to hook myself up to a pump every day at work to collect food for my baby, but I was absolutely unwilling to deal with soiled cloth diapers when I came back home. Especially since we didn't have a washing machine, but were laundromat customers... 

Other decisions certainly took a bit of time and relied on trial and error. And adjustments were necessary as time went by. 

For example we bought a running stroller, but Ace was too small to sit in there. 

But guess what, his infant car seat fit perfectly in it, so we would just use that combination to go out.

Or we bought a Snugli baby carrier, but in the beginning again he was too small for it.
So I got a baby pouch sling to carry him around for the first couple of months. 

(By the way that also solved the problem with noisy strangers trying to touch him. People often thought it was just a hand bag... lol)
And eventually when he was over a year old and had gotten a bit too heavy for the Snugli, I bought a sling wrap so that I could hip carry him.

Of course then there was also the sleeping situation...

While I was pregnant I thought I had it all figured out: I had insisted on buying a bassinet, so we got one and had it set up next to our bed. 

My idea was: I am close to the baby when he needs me, but he is still sleeping in his own bed. This will make it easier to transition to a crib later when he sleeps through the night.

Yeah, it didn't quite happen that way.. *cough*

Once he was born the midwife gave him to me and told me to keep him close since he would need my body heat to stay warm and so that we could bond as well. So for the next couple of days I would hold him (except when Markus had him, of course) at day and night time and by the time I was ready to let him sleep in his bassinet, Ace wasn't having it anymore. 

He would be fussing and was just so unhappy in the bassinet that we continued to take him with us to bed. And before you knew it, the Laibachers had become a co-sleeping family.

Something I had not really planned on, but I might have been the one benefiting the most from it since it turns out that breastfeeding while co-sleeping is so much easier than having to get up in the middle of the night in order to feed your baby. ;)

Fast forward to today. 

Ace is 20 months now but our sleeping arrangements haven't changed. 

For a while we tried to get him used to sleeping in the PNP but the results were just so so and eventually we just let it go. And it's not like that we aren't enjoying it. It's really nice to be able to be there for your child the second he needs you... and all the cuddle time we get because of it is just wonderful. Also our bed is king-size with plenty of room for all of us, even now that Ace has grown so much. That is: Usually. 

Cause there are the days when even a king-size bed doesn't seem to be enough - especially when you have a child that hates blankets, but loves to steal your pillow:

Oh, the things we don't mind doing for our kids... ;)