I don't want to come across as Cruel Mummy but...
I don't let my children sleep in the marital bed.
Does that make me nasty? Boy #1 thinks - sometimes - that it does. Mainly he thinks this when his younger brother waves the fact in his face that twice in the last 4 months, he (Boy #2) has snuck in - unnoticed by me, I might add - in the small hours and managed to stay put until morning. Smaller than his brother by 2 years, Boy #2 took advantage of my natural defense against the freight-train style snoring from the other side of the bed; namely that of shifting as far away as possible from the source of the noise and clinging there, albeit still asleep. This of course leaves a Boy #2 sized-space down the middle of duvet, which he exploited on these two occasions before bounding back into his own bed at dawn and trumpeting his victory to his furious older brother.
Siblings. Don't you just love them?
We've been had reasonable luck with the Boys' sleeping patterns so far. Certainly whilst they were still tiny we suffered the 1 / 3/ 5am wake-ups for breast and bottle feeding, the pacing backwards and forwards rocking a seemingly inconsolable baby in our arms wondering if we were ever again going to get a full night's rest, and the rushing in at 2am to calm a child shouting in their sleep. In fact, now I come to think of it, that last was almost a nightly fixture for 4 long years; Boy #1 did it from ages 2 - 4, and then just when he stopped, Boy #2 clocked in with his own version until he hit 4 himself. But nowadays they are good; they go to bed when we ask them to, and they don't wake up much before 7am, which personally - needing my own sleep - I call a result.
Even from the first, when they were only tiny scraps, I was never any good at co-sleeping with them. At the beginning it was quite simply that I was worried I - or Husband - would roll over and squash them. And yes, I know instances of this are extremely rare, but try telling your exhausted hormone-buzzing just-given-birth psyche that at 3am. It just didn't work for me; I would lie there, rigid with panic, unable to sleep myself, next to a gently snoring husband and baby. So we put each of the boys in a cot next to our own bed - and then after a couple of months, moved them into their own room. Then, when they were toddling around, they were just too restless when asleep, both of them capable of moving from one end of their cot and back again between checks, to convince me it was a good idea to have them with us.
And so we settled into a routine where they slept in their beds, we slept in ours, and everyone had a good night's sleep. I saw no reason to change that as they got older. Sure, we have Sunday mornings when they bounce all over us and put toes cold from half an hour of playing with toys before we wake up onto our warm hands and legs, but as for spending the night in the same bed - well, I just don't encourage it.
Don't get me wrong, if they're ill I will get as close to them as I can, and if I'm not actually sleeping on their floor I might as well be for the amount of time I pop in and out of their room to check on them. But aside from the fact that I operate much better when I've had a proper night's sleep myself, it's always seemed to me that Husband's and my bed is just that; for Husband and I. There is one room in the house that belongs exclusively to us, and I want to keep it that way.
I don't think that makes me a bad mother. Despite what my son might say...
I don't let my children sleep in the marital bed.
Does that make me nasty? Boy #1 thinks - sometimes - that it does. Mainly he thinks this when his younger brother waves the fact in his face that twice in the last 4 months, he (Boy #2) has snuck in - unnoticed by me, I might add - in the small hours and managed to stay put until morning. Smaller than his brother by 2 years, Boy #2 took advantage of my natural defense against the freight-train style snoring from the other side of the bed; namely that of shifting as far away as possible from the source of the noise and clinging there, albeit still asleep. This of course leaves a Boy #2 sized-space down the middle of duvet, which he exploited on these two occasions before bounding back into his own bed at dawn and trumpeting his victory to his furious older brother.
Siblings. Don't you just love them?
We've been had reasonable luck with the Boys' sleeping patterns so far. Certainly whilst they were still tiny we suffered the 1 / 3/ 5am wake-ups for breast and bottle feeding, the pacing backwards and forwards rocking a seemingly inconsolable baby in our arms wondering if we were ever again going to get a full night's rest, and the rushing in at 2am to calm a child shouting in their sleep. In fact, now I come to think of it, that last was almost a nightly fixture for 4 long years; Boy #1 did it from ages 2 - 4, and then just when he stopped, Boy #2 clocked in with his own version until he hit 4 himself. But nowadays they are good; they go to bed when we ask them to, and they don't wake up much before 7am, which personally - needing my own sleep - I call a result.
Even from the first, when they were only tiny scraps, I was never any good at co-sleeping with them. At the beginning it was quite simply that I was worried I - or Husband - would roll over and squash them. And yes, I know instances of this are extremely rare, but try telling your exhausted hormone-buzzing just-given-birth psyche that at 3am. It just didn't work for me; I would lie there, rigid with panic, unable to sleep myself, next to a gently snoring husband and baby. So we put each of the boys in a cot next to our own bed - and then after a couple of months, moved them into their own room. Then, when they were toddling around, they were just too restless when asleep, both of them capable of moving from one end of their cot and back again between checks, to convince me it was a good idea to have them with us.
And so we settled into a routine where they slept in their beds, we slept in ours, and everyone had a good night's sleep. I saw no reason to change that as they got older. Sure, we have Sunday mornings when they bounce all over us and put toes cold from half an hour of playing with toys before we wake up onto our warm hands and legs, but as for spending the night in the same bed - well, I just don't encourage it.
Don't get me wrong, if they're ill I will get as close to them as I can, and if I'm not actually sleeping on their floor I might as well be for the amount of time I pop in and out of their room to check on them. But aside from the fact that I operate much better when I've had a proper night's sleep myself, it's always seemed to me that Husband's and my bed is just that; for Husband and I. There is one room in the house that belongs exclusively to us, and I want to keep it that way.
I don't think that makes me a bad mother. Despite what my son might say...
