Up, Up, and Away

The tots have been sharing a room for a little over a month now.  It's gone from not-so-great, to bad, to worse, to intolerable.  The last several days Timm and I have been averaging approximately 3 hours of interrupted sleep per night. 
Intolerable. 
He slept better at night as a newborn.  And even then, it wasn't too great.
When he doesn't sleep, in the middle of the night, I look at the clock and for some reason the numbers just overtake my brain.  I hate numbers and mathematics, yet I would drive myself crazy coming up with equations to figure out how much sleep we each were getting, or weren't getting.  Or both. 
He just wants to nurse all. night. long.  He won't sleep unless he is physically attached to me, but I cannot sleep with him latched on.  If I would try to disengage, he literally has been throwing tantrums in the middle of the night.  It's rough. 
And to keep from waking Iris up, I've just been bringing Asher into our room.  Only now his bed is no longer in our room, so he's been sleeping the majority of the night in our bed.  So, yeah, this room sharing idea for the kids totally backfired.

Our pediatrician offered up a possible solution:  "temporarily remove the Iris-factor from the equation" (his words).
Since Iris is the good sleeper and flexible personality, set up a temporary spot for her to sleep in our room so that we can leave Asher in his bed, in his room, and make as much noise and take as much time as we need without the worry of waking her up.  Once our light-sleeping, change-hating little boy finally gets used to his "new" sleeping arrangement, move Iris back into her bed.

We are desperate, so we are giving it a go.  Even though this could possibly take a month or more.  (And even though she's flexible, Iris is still a creature of habit.  She likes her room.  I don't know how long it'll be before she's pining for her own bed again...)

Last night was the first night of the new arrangement.  Iris thinks it's awesome to be camping out in Mom and Dad's room for a few nights (we haven't told her just how long it might take).
I slept better last night than I have in weeks.  But that is mostly because I have the sound turned all the way down on the monitor.  I am a light sleeper, though, and I do wake up to him crying- just not to the first whimper he makes, as I had been doing when Iris was still in there.
I decided to wake Timm up and send him in to calm Asher down.  I was afraid that if I went in there, he'd expect to begin his marathon nursing again.  I figured it would be easier to break the cycle if Timm went in there, so we could avoid the inevitable tantrum.  Timm was none too pleased, but he never is when it comes to waking up.
But after that last night, we've gotten positive results... Timm was able to get Asher back down without having to bring him in to me.  And Asher only woke up twice (as opposed to his recent habit of waking up at least every other hour through the night).
The strangest thing I noticed, though, was that the numbers were gone.  When I woke up to him crying, I looked at the clock like I always do.  But this time, instead of adding up lost hours of sleep, I thought about poetry.  I remember writing a poem in my mind instead of a math problem.  I don't remember what the poem was, but it was about my son.  And I liked it.

Right now, I am optimistic.  Things are looking up for the first time since moving them together.  Stay tuned.