Family Bed….

Twice this week we had a third party visitor in our bed.

When we had our first child, Hanna, we opted to never have the baby sleep in our bed. The idea of the “family bed” brought nothing but fear and stress-filled dreams that we would either a) crush the baby in her sleep or b) lose her in the sheets. It only took one episode of me nodding off while nursing which resulted in frantically tearing the sheets, duvet, pillows, bed skirt, curtains, artwork and Greg from the bed in search of our newborn baby who was of course, nestled quietly in the pack ‘n play right beside us before setting our strict “no baby in the bed” policy in motion.

Skip ahead six years and like most of our earlier rules, we were too tired to enforce them. Earlier this week, Chloe was running a low grade fever and woke up around midnight. I was happy to bring her into the bed to keep an eye on her. Had I known, it would be her eyes on us the entire night I may have revoked the invite. She would poke at Greg’s neck and say, “Daddy, what u doing?” and ask “Mommy, can I have Kleenex for my boogers?” for hours on end. She would then hand me the tissue while wiping random, sticky findings from her finger onto my arm before pretending to sleep. At one point, Greg’s arm had fallen asleep under his head and he felt a little hand playing with his dead fingers like they were a set of wind chimes.

Then last night, Hanna had a sleepover so we gave Ellie a few options to choose from for her own camp-out, a) basement on a blow-up mattress with Mom or Dad, b) guest room, c) Mom and Dad’s bed. She chose “c” which is ironic given an aerial view of our formation appeared more like an upper case letter H from 2am thru 6:15am. She would kick me in the hip and something we’ll have to look into when we’ve had more sleep, occasionally punch at the air and shout, “Stop it Hanna! Stop it right now!”

The punches she landed were unnecessary and sometimes painful given the time of night and the shock value associated with being hit, in the dark while sound asleep.

I used to look forward to a restful night of sleep. Now, I will settle for waking up without any noticeable bruising or booger-filled arm hair.

Parenting can be glamorous.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *