Why You'll Never Find Me Co-Sleeping With My Child

Tell me: are you a co-sleeping or bed-sharing parent? Does the thought of sharing sleeping quarters with your children make you fawn, or does it make you cringe? I'm nothing if not in full support of open expressions of love and tenderness when it comes to the parent-child relationship, and particularly when it comes to such a thing as co-sleeping and bed-sharing…

…For you, that is.

For me? Never.

Now, hear me out. I gave birth to a sweet, squirmy and wiggly little girl in early 2013. And for the first seven months of her life, we co-slept and very occasionally bed-shared, much to my husband’s chagrin.

As a rule, that babe of ours slept fitfully in a Pack ‘n Play at the foot of our bed, which allowed me to be readily available at the very moment I heard even a peep coming from her, and it allowed my husband to get what he’d classify as a god-awful sleep.

Of course, any mother who’s waded through those early days of parenthood — like a blind person navigating a carnival funhouse — will know what I mean when I say that the sleep my husband was getting was better classified as perfectly-sound-hardly-interrupted-whatsoever-dead-to-the-world snorefest. Because yeah, dude, I had laser beams shooting out of my eyes right into your head while I paced the floors, soothed our ornery, nocturnal human, and let her deplete my very life source by way of my breasts myriad times throughout the course of a night. All while you slept like a dog, so maybe scale back a bit when you’re telling me how exhausted you are.

But I digress.

My god, I love that girl to bits, but you couldn’t pay me money to sleep with her, I swear. I’m penning a few empathy-driven letters to any future partners she may end up with, who’ll surely long wistfully for their own sleeping quarters night after night.

Our daughter is the reigning Queen of Bad Sleep. It took her two years to cut her night wakings down to two or three rather than upwards of A DOZEN, and it wasn’t until somewhere around her third birthday that she transitioned from being an occasional night owl to someone who’d developed a life-threatening allergy to bedtime in general. (But that’s a story for another day.)

And so barring those rare occasions when we find ourselves spending a night or two in a hotel or camping as a family, you will never (read: Never. Ever. Never.) find me sharing a bed or a room with that darling girl of mine, who I swear to you I adore to the ends of the earth.

Because that Queen of Garbage Sleep Habits, darling though she is during daylight hours, sure knows how to thrash in her sleep. I’ve been backhanded in the face, I’ve been elbowed in the boob, and I’ve been kneed in the back. She grinds her teeth with such fervor that her eyeteeth are flat. THEY USED TO BE POINTY.

I can tuck her in at bedtime and plant a kiss on her sweet head, which is resting softly on her pillow, as it should be. Then hours later, when I check on her before heading to bed myself, I have to do a quick scan around her full-size bed just to locate her. She is almost never even remotely close to where she started out. She is almost always upside down, head jammed up against the wall or her footboard, stuffed animals scattered like confetti all around her.

My god, I love that girl to bits, but you couldn’t pay me money to sleep with her, I swear. I’m penning a few empathy-driven letters to any future partners she may end up with, who’ll surely long wistfully for their own sleeping quarters night after night.

So, you know, yes — I’m all for co-sleeping, and I’m all for bed-sharing... for you guys. Gather up your little wildlings at night, push a couple beds together, and sleep soundly if that’s your jam. I love it. But in my house, that’s a hard no.

Nope, nope, never.