Friday, February 15, 2008

I Love Co-Sleeping

As I know I have mentioned before, we are a co-sleeping family. I have missed the family bed because during my drugged up chemo days I did not want to sleep with the baby because I felt it was unsafe. I am back in the bed with Captain Adorable now and I just want to write about how happy it makes me to share sleep. The soft breathing, the warm little body beside me, when he sweetly snuggles closer to me in the night, his head on my pillow...all those things and more lovely moments are the reasons I love sleeping with my son. Captain Adorable is not perfect; he does often wake up and cry (for no discernible reason) once or twice in the middle of the night (always pretty easily goes back to sleep--no getting out of bed involved) but I do not care. The reasons I love co-sleeping far outweigh the bits of sleep I lose when he cries.

Captain Obvious, on the other hand, is sleeping in the sewing room, on the bed (ok, futon) where I slept during chemo. This is because while we were sleeping apart each of us got used to silence and now we are each having a hard time with the other one's snoring. We both admit to snoring, but both of us think the other one is worse...Captain Adorable snores too, but his snoring is little a cute and only happens when he is snotty (and he has had a couple of colds recently).

When Captain Adorable was born we had a cradle set up on my side of the bed for him to sleep in. I spent half the night getting up to look at him or leaning over to listen for the sounds of his breathing and the other half getting up to take him across the hall to sit in the glider (which was in the nursery at the time) to nurse him. I did end up with the baby in bed with me pretty much every night because I was too tired to get out of bed to nurse him, and as a newborn, he needed to nurse a lot. Finally, one night as I was putting Captain Adorable into the cradle a couple of weeks after he was born, Captain Obvious said, "Why do you even bother putting him in that thing?" and we never looked back. From that night on, we all slept in the king-sized bed together. I read up on co-sleeping and it seems to be quite controversial...but it works great for us. Both parents love it and the baby seems to find it works perfectly for him, too.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love sleeping with my little one to! My husband moved to the other room as well, but what counts is that we are all well rested!

bonnie said...

I love your family's co-sleeping. I never regretted any of the years I co-slept with my now teenaged daughter. I think it has softened our relationship as we deal with the drama of her teenage years. My two sons use their night time homing to find me most nights even if they fall asleep in their own bed. I love being able to throw a blanket over them if they kick the covers off or hear their sweet sleepy thoughts, or watch over them closely if they are sick.

You are giving Captain Adorable another priceless gift.

Lance Noe said...

I would love to share co sleep time with you!