As I lay in bed this morning with a stabbing pain in my shoulder, I began to reflect on my experiences with bed-sharing over the years.
As a child, I had a twin bed. Most of my friends had queen-size beds, but, as is wont with young people, I wasn’t aware of the difference. Later in life, when I thought about it, I felt that it made sense for me to have a single bed until college; after all, it was only me in it.
Then, at college, the beds got longer but not wider. That made for close cuddling with romantic partners and suite mates, the latter of whom would join me for collaborative Sudoku puzzles and chatting at any time of day or night.
Fast forward to the last few years. When we had Claire, Crispin and I were very strict about not letting her sleep with us. We knew that if we gave her an inch, she’d take a mile. I think that in her first two and a half years, we could count on one hand the number of times she slept in our bed.
Then, earlier this year, circumstances forced us to change our co-sleeping policy with Cormac. Because of his respiratory viruses, we had to keep him propped upright while sleeping and the easiest way to do that was on our pillows, nestled between the two of us. Honestly, when he was at his sickest, I felt I needed him right there, so I knew that he was breathing all night. But gradually he got better, and I was reluctant to go back to his own bed.
Realizing I was not getting much quality sleep at night, I eventually made a hard push to make him sleep in his crib. It involved a couple of tough, tear-filled (mostly Cormac’s) nights, but now he is used to the routine and settles down solo pretty easily. However, in the meantime, a little apparition has begun materializing in the middle of the night, quietly crawling under the covers next to me. I wake up to a little angel snuggled in beside me.
The thing with kids is, like little dogs—two of whom also share our queen size bed—they seem to take up about 4 times more room than you expect them to. And somehow, all of that room that they’re occupying is the room that I am—or was—occupying. When Crispin’s home, he has his normal half of the bed, and then Claire has three quarters of my half, and I’m left with…what? An oddly shaped eighth?
So when Claire stumbled into my room last night mumbling, “Mommy, I just want to snuggle with you,” I grunted a welcome and peeled back the covers, and then gradually became aware of the pain in my shoulder that I got from contorting my body around my sprawled out 35 pound bedfellow. But—of course—I didn’t move her.
I think about how space and privacy are so normalized in the US but are really a global status of privilege. Many cultures fit several family members to a bed, usually from need rather than want. And I think about how lucky I am to have a big, comfortable bed to share with my husband. And I think about how lucky I am to have two amazing children to share our bed with us.
Sometimes, I find myself wishing that I wasn’t half-hanging off the bed, sleeping fitfully because of my small nocturnal intruders. But then I look at their sleeping faces and realize that that day will come—eventually—and right now, I wouldn’t exchange this aching shoulder for the world.
