Reason Number 24: Co-Sleeping

 Reason Number 24:  Co-sleeping

Before Grace was born, I read every book on parenting that I could get my hands on.  I read so much that friends started asking my advice before I was actually a parent, which was more or less ridiculous.  But I was well read on the subject by the time she came along.  One of the best books I read—and have since recommended to countless other new moms—was Working Mother, Nursing Mother. It advocated a style of parenting that I had never heard of previously, but was instantly drawn to in light of my imminent, heartbreaking return to work.  It was called Attachment Parenting (coincidentally also the name of another book I subsequently read) and advocated for co-sleeping as a means of ensuring ongoing adequate milk supply when continuing to work full time, a way to maximize contact and interaction even while sleeping, and a way to ensure the least amount of sleep disruption for the tired mama.  All of that sounded great to me, especially since Chad was working night shift at the time and therefore never joined us in the family bed until about an hour before I got up to start my day.  I carefully read how to keep my precious Gracie safe under such circumstances, and also that co-sleeping moms and babies generally synced up their sleep cycles so that when the baby was growing hungry and most likely to wake, the mom would also have cycled to her lightest sleep state, and be primed to feed her hungry baby without either one of them needing to awaken completely.  I also read how the notion of a nursing infant sleeping in a separate room was a very modern (and wealthy) adaptation to how mothers and babies had slept across cultures for millennia.  Study after study confirmed that nursing mothers maintained a nearly superhuman awareness of their littles, curving their bodies around their precious little ones in an elegant ballet of sleeping mother love (this is not the words used by the scientific studies, but you catch my drift).  

I heard all the warnings, mostly from concerned family members who felt comfortable challenging me at my most vulnerable (for who is more prone to accepting criticism than a hormonally addled, sleep deprived, terrified first time mama?).  I also had lovely (slightly more gentle) encouragement from mothers whose parenting I greatly admired, and eventually I just ignored everyone and learned to keep my mouth shut.  It was really no ones business who I was sleeping with anyway.  I did worry for awhile that Grace might never leave my bed—she was always so attached to me.  In those early days, she developed a habit of rubbing my arm as she nursed, and she maintained that habit (the arm rubbing, not the nursing) under stress or struggle well into kindergarten.  Several times over the last few years, in order to stem my not crying, I will reach teasingly to caress her arm the same way.  I’m trying to remind my wildly independent, not particularly affectionate daughter how connected we once were.  (PDA, or even private displays of affection just aren’t her style.  I bought her a shirt for Christmas bearing the image of a cactus with the caption “not a hugger”, and I don’t let it bother me when I feel her stiffen when I force her to hug me these days).  I am happy (ish) to report that she’s strong and confident and has slept alone in her big girl bed for well over a decade now.  It means I did my job and she’s confident in the world—even what was once the dark, scary nighttime world of a lonely bed not beside me.  Not crying.

A few weeks ago, with the promise of some of the nicest weather of the spring yet, the kids and I decided to relocate to the lake mid-week.  With a strong internet connection, we all suddenly live in a world where we can learn and work anywhere, so why not spend more of our time in a place with a better view?  We zoomed and conference called and remote worked our way through the day, and as evening approached, Clay (my sweet, snuggly baby) unceremoniously announced that he would be sleeping with me since dad had had to stay home to finish work.  He and I cuddled up in the king size bed in the master, the two little girls opted to sleep in the guest room on the main level, and Grace headed for the loft (Sam had also had to stay home for work).  I had just settled in with my book and my baby boy when I heard a shriek and steps pounding down the staircase.

“There’s something up there,” Grace insisted breathlessly, bounding into our room.

“What?” I asked, pulling the covers up under my chin. “What do you mean?”  

“It’s a mouse, or a squirrel or chipmunk or something.  I don’t know.”

I felt a little queasy as I am not good with rodents (In my defense, I would totally have gone up to deal with a spider or insect issue).  “Are you sure?”

“No,” she said honestly, “But I’m not sleeping up there.”  Perhaps a braver grown-up would have offered to go check it out for her, but I don’t do mice.  I felt safer snuggled under the covers with my 9 year old son and 7 pound lapdog to protect me.  Grace is stronger and faster and quite possibly braver than me, anyway.  What did she want me to do?

I offered her the couch in the living room which was met with limited enthusiasm.

“Just sleep with us,” Clay said, a bit confused as to why we hadn’t just started with that arrangement.

“Can I?” My big, beautiful grown up girl asked, a goofy grin on her face.  My heart melted.  There is so much about having a big family that I love, but I always worry that I had to hustle my big kids to grow up too fast.  There was no time for big girls and boys to be scared and irresponsible or uncooperative or long requiring of nighttime snuggles.  I needed assistants and co-captains.  Perhaps for one brief moment, there was a risk that Grace would never learn to sleep alone, but by the time she was 6 she had 3 younger siblings and there was no room for big girls when there were always new babies in the bed.  When Grace was a middle schooler, she had once asked to sleep with her aunt Carrie when she was visiting.  Carrie had reported lanky, awkward Grace reaching for cuddles all night long.  There was a time when Grace was quite the snuggly sleeper.  I looked up at my tall, powerful daughter and grinned, feigning resignation. 

“I guess,” I said, pulling Clay closer to me and beginning to rearrange pillows.  Grace is a full grown human now and a fairly large one at that.  The king bed is substantial, but it is surely not meant for 3 (4 if you count the dog, because I am also a firm advocate of attachment puppy-parenting).  Also, there are terrible family rumors abounding that suggest I might snore (wicked lie) and I didn’t want to disturb her.  (Clay, by his own description, is an extremely hard sleeper and has never once complained).

“Well, I’m not going back up there,” she said, and we all fell silent for a moment listening for the scrabble of tiny, disgusting feet overhead.  We heard nothing, but Grace piled in beside us nonetheless.

I did not cry as she settled in comfortably beside her brother, who wiggled his blonde head onto my shoulder and threw his skinny arm around my waist.  I did not cry as my beautiful big girl settled in, snapping her phone off with an audible click and rolling over onto her belly.  I did not cry as I put down my book and took off my glasses in a motion I’ve made a thousand thousand times in my lifetime.  I didn’t kiss her sleepy head—blonde hair still fuzzy but all filled in now, blue eyes still bright and no longer requiring my physical touch to drift closed.  I kissed the matching blonde head of her brother, and closed my eyes.  I listened to their quiet breathing in the soft, lakeside darkness, my heart full of the remembered intimacy of all those many bedtimes gone by, mine again for this one magical night.  Not crying.

For the record, I am soooo not sorry I kept her by my side all those nights when she was tiny. She was only truly mine—mine alone—for those few precious hours in the middle of the night, when the demands of our loud, busy days were silenced and we were alone in that dark house.  It was only a brief, beloved season that I would never, ever do differently.  She was a big sister at 18 months.  She was the oldest of five before she turned eight.  I had her—and she had me—for the merest blink in the long lens of our lives together. I’m glad I listened to my own mama heart, and the wise counsel of the right books and the right people.  I could never have hurt her, in my sleep or in any other way.  Every fiber of my being is conditioned by evolution and every single beat of my mama heart to protect her.  I could not have forgotten, for a solitary moment—waking or sleeping— the presence and existence of that perfect flesh beside me. I have loved every bone and sinew of that body viscerally since the very moment it began to exist, buried deep and protected within my own, tucked just beneath my heart.  Not crying.

I worried so much when Grace was small.  Motherhood was so fresh and bewildering and utterly overwhelming.  The hours I spent reading (and reading and reading) on all the things that create such passion and fear in new moms.  And now, as I come out on the other side of this first part—the parenting someone in my home every day for 18 odd years part—I still worry.  I wonder if our mix of personalities left scars—her caution against my brashness, her quiet, my loud, my heart on my sleeve, hers tightly guarded.  But this is what I do know:  in a few weeks, when our beautiful seniors are finally able to walk the stage, not one of us will know which ones co-slept and which ones cried it out.  We won’t be able to pick out the breast from the bottle fed, or who had their pacifiers until they were five, or who wore diapers right up until kindergarten orientation.  Over the long stretch of time, it all evens out...

But it’s just a crowded bed in a summer home in a weird senior season.  It’s just a temporary respite hiding from possible pests.  It’s just a long ago choice to keep my baby girl close through the nighttime hours.  It’s just a random night when circumstances combined to put us all in one bed again. It’s not a reason to cry.  So I didn’t. Eventually, our breathing slowed and we drifted into sleep—my biggest, my littlest, and me.  I’m not crying, you’re crying.