Bed-Sharing

Anyone who has read my blog for any amount of time knows that we’re a family of co-sleepers. Alyssa slept in our bed from the first day she came home from the hospital. She might have spent two nights in her crib before we took it down and put it away until Olivia came home.

Olivia slept in a bassinet for the first couple of months because she was on an heart monitor at first and it was dangerous for her to be in the family bed. But once she was off the monitor, she was in our bed too.

When we moved to Ohio from Indiana, the master bedroom was so big, that I just put our queen sized bed in there along with a couple of smaller beds. Seriously, it was still not crowded.

In the end, Tom tended to fall asleep on the couch, I put the girls to bed in the queen bed and I slept on a twin bed in the same room with them. That was the case for the first several years in our current house.

So I got used to not sleeping with anyone and it is glorious.

A few years ago, we decided it was time for the girls to sleep in their own room. So, because I’m a hoverer, we all three moved from the master bedroom to the larger of the three other bedrooms. The girls were in bunk beds, Alyssa on top, Olivia on bottom. I was in a full bed. That lasted until Alyssa’s fourteenth birthday (so going on two years ago.) At that point, she kicked me and Olivia out.

Alyssa now sleeps in her own room. See, it happens, eventually, to everyone. . Just saying to everyone who thought it was insane that we were sleeping in the same bed/room forever. Everyone should do what works for them. I’m not judging anyone who chooses to put their baby in their own crib in their own room from the start. If that works for you, go you. It didn’t work for me. But I know it works for most people. So yes, stepping off my non-judgmental soapbox now.

Where was I?

Oh yes, Alyssa sleeps in her own room. We need to take the bunkbeds down now that she’s sleeping in the full bed in her room. It would give her ever so much more room…one of these days. For sure.

When Lyss kicked us out, Olivia and I moved back down the hall to the master bedroom. But we didn’t go back to sharing a bad. Oh hell no. She sleeps in a twin bed and I’m in the queen. Tom is still on the couch, for anyone interested. He always falls asleep there watching tv and I figure I get two of us to bed I don’t want to be responsible for making him get up and come to bed too.

All this (almost 500 words, good lord!) to say that Olivia and I shared a bed last weekend at the hotel in Bloomington and it…was…awful.

That child has no concept of personal space. The first night, I put a blanket between us. It helped not at all. I pushed her leg off me no fewer than five times. She weighs about 105lbs and still took up more than 2/3 of the bed. Please just believe me when I say that I weight more than she does. I hugged the edge of the bed all night long both nights.

The second night, I woke myself up whimpering, “No, no, no, no.”

I’d been dreaming that Olivia had her head in my back and was pushing at me. It turns out it was her knee. Apparently, she wanted more than her 2/3 of the bed. She wanted the whole thing and was trying, in her sleep, to kicked me out. I had to push back at her knee really hard just to get her to give me three extra inches of bed.

The next morning when my mom got up to get dressed, I limped across the room and laid down in her vacant bed.

Ten minutes after I’d vacated the ten inches of bed that Olivia has allotted me, she woke up and asked me what I was doing.

I replied, “Escaping the torture.”

“Can I join you?” she asked sleepily.

I managed a laugh even though every joint in my body ached. “No, you’re the one who was torturing me.”

Alas, I wish I could say that I will never share a bed with that child again but I think when we spend the night in West Lafayette this Saturday I’ll have to brave it all again. I will try the blanket thing again, though. While the blanket was there, she didn’t jam her knee into my ribs so that’s something.