My kids are hellions. There are days when Avalyn drives me absolutely batty. I love that girl to the moon and back, but she knows just how to get on Mommy's nerves. She's like her big brother in that way. I will tell her not to touch something and she will stare at me as she slowly touches whatever it is again. Just like Keith, and Keith drove me crazy. So, after a long (long, long, long, long) day we need to recharge. Well, I need to recharge, Avalyn could probably keep going and keep testing long into the night. This probably makes people think, "Okay, so she spends all day with her kids AND she wants to share a bed with them? Is she crazy?" I will admit that I can be goofy at times, and my husband sure thinks I'm nuts, but sharing my bed with my kids actually relaxes me (most days).
It's a really nice feeling to get into bed with Avalyn climbing up behind me with her sippy cup and hear her say, "I want mommy bed! Mommy lay down, too. I want snuggles, Mommy!" Avalyn is not a good sleeper. She was better when she was still breastfeeding - thanks to milk coma's - but she's really bad at it now. If this was a gradable subject she would have a "D-". Not an "F" because she does sleep, but it is a huge struggle. It's even harder if I'm trying to put her to bed in her own room. She doesn't do well by herself. Enter bed sharing. Life became easier when I gave into bed sharing. I was dead set against it in the beginning. I had heard horror stories of babies being suffocated by their parents, parents not being able to transition the kids into big kid beds, parents no longer having a place to be intimate... all of the cons. So, I was terrified.
We started this when we were still living in our teeny tiny house. All four of us in 900 square foot box. It was a pretty tight fit in the "master bedroom" as it was. It was an eleven by ten room. We had a six foot long dresser, a queen bed, a two foot long dresser, and a crib all packed into the place. My biggest concern was our bed would be unsafe. So, I looked up how to co-sleep safely. Dr. McKenna's suggestions were these:
"Infants should sleep on firm surfaces, clean surfaces, in the absence of smoke, under light (but comfortable) blanketing, and their heads should never be covered. The bed should not have any stuffed animals or pillows around the infant and never should an infant be placed to sleep on top of a pillow. Sheepskins or other fluffy material and especially beanbag mattresses should never be used. Water beds can be dangerous, too, and the mattresses should always tightly intersect the bedframe. Infants should never sleep on couches or sofas -- with or without adults -- where they can slip down (face first) into the crevice or get wedged against the back of a couch."
This is what my bed looked like.
I was off to a good start. The bed was clean and firm, we don't smoke, Avalyn was always dressed in footy pajama's (she was a no blanket kind of girl, still is), no stuffed animals (well, not with her anyway... just above her) or pillows, and no crevices she could get wedged into or against. We attached her crib to our bed, since we had a queen sized bed at the time and there wasn't really room for her, and put foam in between the crib mattress and railing. This made sure there were no creases for Avalyn to fall into. I also threw a flannel blanket down that went over the entire crib mattress and half of our mattress. This gave her her own space but she was close enough to mommy to feel secure. Even after she stopped nursing bed-sharing made it easy for her to fall asleep securely.
When I found out I was pregnant with Nicolas, I told Matt it was time to spring for a king sized mattress. We went with a mattress with a memory foam topper. Avalyn was instantly in love with it. I was fine with that. I assumed she would be out of the crib and could sleep in between Matt and me. This did not happen. When Nicolas showed up I was originally going to put him right in the crib (which is still next to our bed in side car position like the photo above), but Avalyn refused to give it up. In fact, Avalyn had been sleeping wonderfully on a cot in our room for a month by the time Nicolas arrived. But once she saw a baby in her bed, the cot was a thing of the past and the crib was hers again.
So, I ended up putting Nicolas in a co-sleeper in between Matt and me. I have a love/hate relationship with the co-sleeper. I love it because he's nice and protected, but I hate it because I have to move it whenever I feed him.
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