Why I Love Co-sleeping

I do miss my husband—who spends his nights usually in one of the three beds upstairs that I fail to occupy. But after he’s finished his nightly round of TinTin bedtime stories rife with stellar vocabulary for the under age-eight crowd (monocle, Yeti) and names you can’t restrain yourself from saying more than once (Bianca Castafiore, Snowy), I wouldn’t miss the night time conversations I overhear wedged between two of the three kids for anything:

my 6 year old son, to his 3 year old brother, on heaven:

But, down here’s way cooler than heaven. I mean, you get to do sports, like knit.

Can you tell he’s attending a Waldorf school at the moment? And that my sport loving husband (swimming and cross-country coach) will shortly be withdrawing our son’s enrollment when, I mean if, he ever reads my blog?

Co-sleeping criticisms come via the family. Early on I was stunned by the voracity of several generations of my husband’s family members inquiring about our sex life. Out of respect for them, I usually pretend I didn’t hear the question. “How are we managing what? I didn’t quite catch that.” And follow-up with, “Another hors-de-oeuvre?” My husband, far cheekier than I, chimes in with, “What do you think the kitchen floor is for?” which puts high color in everyone’s cheeks and signals my exit to the counter to trade in my champagne flute for a shot-glass.

I’ll admit, one time when I felt I just couldn’t bear sharing the bed with the kids any longer, I did the math. The nights with my children under our roof are finite, like there’s a number I could count to. It was pretty high, like more than a thousand, but still, finite (and they’ll have moved on to their own beds for many of those nights). One day my sons might wake up and decide they want nothing to do with me, mom. And the same for my daughter. So I’ll enjoy the conversation and I’ll take the many wee hour trips holding sticky hands on the way to the bathroom, good for encouraging hygiene, and from the Olympic sport of “Edge Sleeping” that stiff spine, good for encouraging the midnight detour to the kitchen for some stretching, and if I’m lucky, maybe even an uncensored romp.