The Family Bed

I truly believed I was going to write definitively about the Family Bed. This great debate about who gets to sleep with whom each evening. Is your bed just a place for you and your husband or is it a safe space for you, your husband and your children?

I believe it is a place for two. Space is sacred and we give each person their own space. I spend all day being a mom. Often I am covered in paint and food stains, I have mediated countless arguments, tried to impart some wisdom, read lots of kids’ books (Mo Willems, how wonderful are you!) and by the time I crawl into bed at night, I’d like some kid-free space.

But then I started reading The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother’s Memoir by Katrina Kenison. In this unabashedly sentimental book, Kenison writes about her boys growing older and spending more and more time in their own worlds. Suddenly, our children no longer define us. They no longer need us 24 hours a day. And then, just like that, my bed got sort of lonely. Oh, family bed, let me snuggle with my cuties for as long as they’ll have me. Sure I’m totally uncomfortable and you all snore loudly, but how long will you be little and adorable for? So, I thought I changed my mind.

Then, that very night, my one year old cried and cried. He is cutting four teeth at once so our new ritual is that he comes into my bed every night at about midnight until he can fall back asleep. My four year old joined us at about 1:30 in the morning. He wasn’t feeling so well. OK. I can snuggle, I thought. My six year old climbed in at about 3 am. He just likes my mattress better. Also, no one climbs in to my husband’s bed. Just mom and three little boys.

So, after a night of three and a half hours of sleep, I’d like to write about the Family Bed. I love my kids many many hours of the day. But I also love sleep. And maybe to love my kids, I need to have a little of sleep each night. I’ll snuggle them in the morning.

Let at it: where do your kids spend their nights?