The whole co-sleeping family thing really used to freak me out. Seriously, sometimes I barely know myself. Like breastfeeding, for instance.
I used to say I wouldn’t breastfeed a baby when it was ‘old enough to ask for it’. My sister enjoys reminding me of this because as it turned out I breastfed my daughter for almost two yeas and I hope to do similarly with my son. Maybe longer. By any definition, at two years of age they can generally ‘ask for it’. I try to recall not just what I thought but more significantly what I felt at that time, back then when I was so certain. What concerned me and why? The thing I didn’t understand when I found it somehow repulsive to breastfeed a child ‘old enough to ask for it’ is that babies ‘ask for it’ right from when they’re born, and they never stop ‘asking for it’, their methods just gradually increase in sophistication, a sophistication that you watch unfold and that otherwise causes you to beam with pleasure. And if you found yourself compelled to oblige them with their earliest requests then you shouldn’t be all that surprised that you’re responsive to their later requests.
Here are just some of the ways babies ‘ask for it’. They cry shrilly, they nuzzle you, they latch on to your fingers, and they turn their face towards you if you brush their cheek. Then one day while balanced in your lap they throw themselves backwards to be laying down near your chest. They clamp on to the fleshiness of your arms and they suck you a hickey. (If you teach your baby to sign then they might, like my baby, even begin signing ‘breastfeed’ to you at five months old). As they’re passed into your arms they tilt their heads sideways with their mouth gaping. They burst into impatient tears at the sight of you undoing your bra. Or they reach their arms down your dress, or they lift up your t-shirt. They usually do all this before they finally ‘ask for it’ with a spoken word and even then their word may be nothing more offensive than the adoption of a particular pitch when they plead “Mama” at you. At what point are ‘they old enough to ask for it’, and at what point is it too much?
And co-sleeping? Oh I am a big, dirty hypocrite there too. I still remember talking to a friend whose family were co-sleeping and thinking that their sleeping arrangements sounded outrageously chaotic. I would never do that. People falling asleep in different rooms with different people each night, it all sounds too ridiculous, too random, like the notion of free-love. I am not suited to free lovin’, too many questions. Who am I with? Are you with me? If you’re with me then why are you with them? Does that mean they’re with me too? Where is my pillow?
But because I barely know myself here we are, sleeping in ever evolving arrangements, and not so freaked out about it. We are the family I swore I’d never be. The co-sleeping hippies. And apparently every time you add a child to the family bed the concept of A Family Bed gets ever more intangible. Bed sharing, co-sleeping, they really don’t describe the arrangements adequately:
Because first there was
2 of us in our bed (he and I)
and then we had a baby and there was
3 of us in our bed
and then I found I couldn’t sleep through the baby sounds so for a few nights there was
2 of us in our bed.. and 1 baby next to our bed………………. and no-one in the baby’s nursery
but then I got so exhausted I fell asleep with the baby next to me anyway, and besides, the baby wouldn’t sleep anywhere else so there was
3 of us back in our bed
and we settled into co-sleeping and a few months later bought a king size bed where we all slept for a long while, until one day when the baby was nearly two years old we bought her a bed of her own for her ‘bedroom’ and then there was
2 of us in our bed………………. and 1 toddler in her bed all the way over in her bedroom
for most of the night, until by dawn there would usually be
3 of us in our bed
and then the toddler starting kicking her blankets off at night and waking frequently so we put her back in with us for the winter, and eventually she didn’t want to leave our bed so there was
3 of us in our bed
and then we had a baby on the way so we bought a side bed and placed it next to our king size bed and sometimes there was
2 of us in our bed.. and 1 little girl in the side bed……………….. and no-one in the little girl’s bedroom
but mostly there was
3 of us in our bed
and while I was pregnant and having trouble sleeping there was occasionally
2 of them in our bed ………………… and 1 mother in the little girl’s bedroom
but now that the baby is here we have all sorts of arrangements, sometimes
2 of us in our bed (1 baby, 1 mother), no-one in the side bed……………….. and 1 little girl and 1 father in the girl’s bedroom
and sometimes
3 of us in our bed.. and 1 little girl in the side bed
(and for a week or two in the beginning when the little girl and the father were really sick with the flu there was
2 of them in our bed…………………. and 1 mother and 1 newborn baby in the little girl’s bedroom)
and even occasionally
2 of us in our bed (1 baby, 1 mother).. and 1 little girl in the side bed……………….. and 1 father in the little girl’s bedroom
but mostly
2 of us in our bed (1 baby, 1 mother).. and 1 little girl and 1 father squashed into the side bed
and very soon the baby will start crawling and then we will have to re-think the arrangement all over again – the king size bed being very high off the floor. Maybe the baby will go down into the little side bed for a while and the rest of us three will sleep in the king size bed, or maybe the mother will go down into the side bed with the baby? When the kids get older perhaps they will sleep together in the side bed, or maybe in the little girl’s bedroom, or the little girl will move properly into her bedroom and the baby will sleep in the side bed until he is a little boy with a bedroom of his own. Who knows? But what I do know is that one day this is how it is all going to end up…
the 2 of us in our bed (he and I).
NB: You will notice that in amidst the chaos of free thinkin’ co-sleeping I maintain a bourgeois existence, I pretty much stay in the king size bed. No fool me.
I feel like a wicked step-mama.
The child went through bouts of wanting to co-sleep and occasionally I’d wake up to find this little thing wriggling next to me in the middle of the night which kept me up. So then my partner ended up spending his nights yo-yoing between our bed and her floor. None of us slept well during that arrangement. Eventually it t’was I who barked in the middle of the night to the child when she got up, do you need to go to the toilet? ‘No’ she said. Well then go back to bed. My partner pretended to sleep through her tears which lasted all of about 10 minutes. And then the co-sleeping ended at our house.
My kid goes to bed in his own room and comes into our room at some stage. Sometimes it’s “in the morning when the sun comes up”, which is what we chant at him when we put him to bed, sometimes it’s 10pm. A few nights ago he came into my bed when I was still reading and the Bloke was still in the loungeroom. The Bloke slept on the floor of the lounge.
I am very jealous of your king size bed. I feel it is most unfair that my attachment child (because ya’know we’re not that into attachment parenting but he really disagrees) did not coincide with having a big enough bedroom to get a bigger bed. Generally these days I don’t mind the co-sleeping, now that the kid doesn’t try to sleep on my face, or insist that I stay on my side in a position that causes extreme pain all the next day. The Bloke has softened, but he still doesn’t sleep that well. It gets very squashy and the doona wars are epic.
Could you move the kingsize mattress onto the floor for a while when Cormac starts crawling? (Surely you have such a mansion you’ve got storage space for a bed base?) Have you read the Biggest Bed in the World?
Ooh, and on breastfeeding, I think my goal was a year before the kid was born. Because a year is kind of my family standard. After he was born it was “one more day”, every day until we got to seven months or so and somehow it wasn’t hard anymore, it wasn’t a big deal, and I couldn’t see any reason to stop. So I didn’t until I had to take some drugs at 19 months that are contra-indicated (of course, they didn’t work, and I wish I hadn’t bothered). At around the point it got easier and I realised I kinda was a little bit of the extended breastfeeding hippy my playgroup friends started weaning. And their kids slept through the night in their own beds. Bastards.
You make me laugh so. much. That’s exactly how I was, we had the super-extended breastfeeding neighbours (like, till around 7) and co-sleepers and we were all smug “oh, we’ll *never* do that, imagine?”. And then we had a baby. The breastfeeding went awry at about 13 months when I was being used as an all-night teething ring, but the co-sleeping! Just recently gave up the pretence of using the cot (ironically given by said neighbours, who only used it for nappy folding) which we had been using for the first part of the night, in our room. Was worried about boy falling out of bed early on, so we got rid of our bed base, put queen + spare double mattress on floor, it’s a room of bed. All sleeping in the same room at the moment, the spare room just seems so far, far away. And after a recent spate of night-waking and night-clinging, boy has had a few nights in a row of sleep throughs (well, until about 4/5 am). Wish I could too. .
Well done you on getting the biggest bed!
What a great post blue milk! I love it!
Especially the part where you are almost always in the big bed đŸ™‚
I’m always intrigued when someone mentions that a toddler has weaned voluntarily. How does it happen? I cannot imagine my boy EVER giving it up and he’s nearly three… and I was also someone who swore she would “stop breastfeeding” when my child was “old enough to ask for it”.
Now I have absolutely no idea what “stopping” would entail… except for those barbaric stories about putting something bitter on your nipples… or leaving him with Dad for a week while I go bush.
I don’t find breastfeeding a chore (except when he’s sick and won’t leave my lap for literally days… or when he goes for the world record for longest ever bedtime breastfeed when I want to get up and chat to guests or something… ) but it would be nice to think that there is precedent for elective weaning. Is there? How does it happen?
I remember saying I was never going to breastfeed because I didn’t want to be ‘like some cow’. I was also a big advocate of the ‘if you can ask for it, you’re too old to have it …’ as well.
Why?
I can’t really remember. I think perhaps it had something to do with my sense of bodily integrity, of wanting to be an individual with no demands on me, and of generally feeling uncomfortable with ‘bodily functions’ (to this day my partner has never seen me on the toilet). I really believed I could retain my pre-child identity, and controlling my body was a key way to do this. But then I had my children and these ideas were swept away with the feeling of connectedness. My emotions utterly transformed my intellectual approach, which is now very pro-breastfeeding.
Karen: my second daughter electively weaned. I was back at work and only breastfeeding in the morning. One morning at ten months she was about to latch on when she heard the crackle of the cornflake packet in the kitchen, rolled off the bed and crawled out the door. And that was that. Moral of the story for me: If you’ve got the time and luxury to not impose weaning, it happens when they’re ready.
Great post! My older one is 9 and the younger one is 4 and things are still, every other day, as chaotic at my house as you describe. So be sure to never give up your claim on the big bed. You need it for years to come..
Loved it. Our seven year old was in our bed by dawn every single night until he was five, then it was every other night and now only on a rare instant that we find ourselves with four in the bed.
Most nights the toddler starts out in his bed next to ours but he’s back inbetween mama and daddy by 2am…
Breastfeeding was going to be 1 year….he’s 16 months and still nursing twice a day. We’re cool.
Just stumbled across your site, and I think I will be hanging around for a while. I thought I’d leave a comment since I was a hippie pretty much from the outset, and sometimes I *indulge* in my hippieness đŸ™‚
I have two daughters, of five and almost two years. The older one gave up breastfeeding the week before her third birthday, partly because I was pregnant and it HURT, so I gently but firmly suggested that it was time to stop. However, she went along totally coolly so I feel it really was time.
I never thought much about how long I’d be breastfeeding but when I started it was a nightmare and I wasn’t sure how long I could possibly keep this up. It got a lot easier and thoroughly enjoyable and suddenly we were into the second year. And then I really felt that a kid should have a fair say in this, although I certainly wouldn’t let them hang on forever. I am a great consensus believer and handle this like pretty much anything else, by feeling what is right and true to me and all others involved, in one particular moment, and then agreeing on something.
Our bedding arrangements are fabulous! We started out with three in the big bed and a baby bed joined directly on the side of the big bed, just in case. We never really used that for anything but it remained there for quite a while. When things didn’t work out between my older one’s father and me, I moved out with her and only had a standard size bed plus her baby bed. The standard size bed fit the two of us alright, but when a new lover came along it got very difficult on the weekends since it wouldn’t fit all three of us, and nobody wanted to sleep elsewhere.
So I moved to a different place with a bigger bed, fitting all three, just to find myself pregnant again. Ever since my second child was born, our weekend nights (he works in another city a bit further away from where we live, so I’m a single mum during the week) have seen any chaotic combination of people on the bed and the sofa – the baby staying with me though.
Then we moved to yet another place and this time the hippie bit really got pampered: the three of us are currently living in an intentional community project, 19 adults and 5 kids (including us) in a fairly large and violently colourful house in a hippie town in the middle of Germany’s very square and boring southwest. We share two rooms among the three of us (and the rest of the house with everybody else) and as I plan to stay here for a while and probably have another child sometime in the near future, I got ourselves a huge and fantastic wooden triple bunk bed, with a French size (140 cm) bed at the bottom and top and a standard size (90 cm) bed in the middle.
My older daughter is only just taking to sleeping in the middle bed, from where she can see everything that’s going on in the bottom bed but snuggle in tightly and have it all to herself. I always sleep in the bottom bed with the little one (who I still breastfeed of course). On weekends her father fits in nicely in the bottom bed – and when my two kids occupy the whole big bottom bed when we want to retire too, we simply move to the sofa! (And rearrange ourselves during the night.)
Oh yes, and the top bed connects to a play area that I’ve put in just above head level for a part of both rooms since we have a fairly high ceiling, so it’s mostly one big mess of toys and whatnot.
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