Sleeping in the same bed with a toddler can harmful to your health...especially if your child is a "kung-fu" sleeper.
When my husband and first started out pre-kids we had a very small bed. A full size that did us fine but that was definitely a tight squeeze and personally I loved it as it lent itself to cuddling. (Insert "Ahhh" now) Then came children. Yes of course I was that parent who said, "My kids will never sleep in our bed...". Okay, well those words didn't even last a month with a new baby. We didn't have the luxury of a co-sleeper so when round the clock nursing took its toll my sweet baby landed on the mattress next to me and my poor 6'4" husband landed on the couch. He chose that of course--he had to still get up to go to work in the mornings and let's be honest here...a newborn and two parents just really don't fit in a full size bed. It wasn't very pretty to say the least.
With just the two of us (a different two of us--Devin and I) a full size bed did just fine for a while. Then when each of my children finally reached about 4 months of age and started sleeping through the night we decided to move them back into their own rooms and to their cribs. I still remember the first night they each made it all the way through without waking once because despite the fact that I should have also been sleeping I wasn't. I was up every hour checking to see if all was okay. Oh and also pumping...because even though my child slept through the night my breasts hadn't figured it out yet. Sigh...
At this point in our lives, my husband (even though he was back in the room with me) decided that we needed a larger bed. We ended up with a king size mattress which seriously felt as though it was so big we each had our own time zone in there. Heaven for sure and even better now that kids were not in there with us.
Right.
Many a night I am awoken to heavy breathing on my face and the whisper of, "Mommy, can I fweep with you?".
Now I am just going to take a moment to insert this very quick statement here...why in the heck is it that they always come to MY side of the bed???? Why don't they ever pose these questions to their father????
Of course we allow them to scramble in and then the real fun begins. They snuggle their bodies in between my husband and I and cozy up under the covers and all would appear to be peaceful and calm. Meanwhile I am arming myself with pillows and stuffing blankets around myself because I am fully aware of what it about to go down...kung-fu sleeping. All of a sudden arms are being thrown and legs are kicking out of nowhere...elbows find chins and occasionally a finger even meets its mark. Yes, it is dangerous to have a 32 pound almost 3 year old in your bed and if you value your life, or at the very least your teeth you'd just say NO when they ask to climb in. Before you know it, it will be 4 am and you'll find yourself up writing a blog to document it all. Oh yes, my daughter and my husband are perfectly content and snoring in the very large city-sized bed now that I have retreated from it and landed on the couch myself.
Hmmmppph.
So what is it that I can be thankful for in this situation? Frankly I'm not really too sure. I'm going to bet that it will end up being coffee because with the very long day ahead of me I'll probably need gallons of it to keep myself going. I love my children dearly but firmly do believe that they have their own beds for a reason...mostly so no one gets hurt, but also because we all need that much needed break that nighttime brings. The refresh stage of the day is hard to manage when all you can think of is how to block the next unintended blow.
Maybe I'll invest in hockey pads...
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