I have posted several times about sleep habits and sleep routines of my tiny person, and even once about an article on co-sleeping. At the end of that I said that while co-sleeping (meaning sharing a room) was fine with us, bed-sharing (sleeping in the same bed as little ones) wasn't for us. And, to a certain extent, that's still true. I don't believe that bed-sharing is the ideal sleep situation for us.
Yet, every morning, I wake up next to Isabelle, usually with her finger in my face as she says "Mummy, eyes! Mummy, nose! Daddy?"
So, if I don't think it's for us, how come she's always there (believe me, I ask myself this every night!) and what has our bed-sharing journey looked like over the last 15 months?
We've been lucky that Isabelle has always been a pretty good sleeper. Not perfect, by any means, but pretty good. There have been awful times - awful nights, and even awful weeks - but overall, she isn't too bad. But, she is very inconsistent. She doesn't follow the same pattern every night, and I find that inconsistency the most difficult thing to deal with. Some nights she will sleep soundly until 5am, other nights she'll have a whinge and a cry at 11pm, then at 2am...and on very bad nights I couldn't even tell you what's happened.
And that's how our 'serious' bed-sharing started - I had always brought her in for an hour or so in the morning, but never during the night. Then, during a sick spell at around 6/7 months there were some horrific nights, when I was up and down, up and down every hour or so. She was snuffly and miserable, and was waking herself up, and everyone was exhausted. It got to the point when we said 'Let's just bring her in to bed and she'll go to sleep', and she did. And it made my life easier as I could stay in bed, warm and cosy, and get a little more sleep.
From there, we have continued. Every morning, when she wakes anytime from around 4.30am onwards, instead of going to her and putting her back to sleep in her own room I nab her in to bed, and we snooze until Simon goes to work. On a bad night, I may make the executive decision to bring her in much earlier than that (sometimes as early as midnight) . When she is sick, or quite often when we are away, she spends almost all night in bed with me, and Simon sometimes sleeps in the spare room. I have even been known to lift her from her bed in to our while I was still asleep and sleep-walking!
Let's call a spade a spade here - I am lazy and so bringing her to bed is the easy option for me in the early hours of the morning, or during a bad night. The overall idea of bringing her in to bed is that I get more sleep than having to go in to her several times on a bad night. But the reality is much different. When she comes into bed, Isabelle wants one thing only: BOOB. She just wants to cuddle up next to me, and feed non-stop. Or, more accurately, comfort suck non-stop. When she unlatches, she may roll over and sleep for a while, but it isn't long until, in her sleep, she is turning back to me and looking for more comfort. So she stays asleep...but wakes me up. And because I am RIGHT THERE, she looks for it much more often than she would if she were in her own bed - maybe every 45 minutes to an hour. Yes, I only just stir to pull her back to me to pop the
boob back in, but it's still disturbed sleep.
Which all amounts to me NOT getting the sleep I thought I would when I pulled her in to bed, and also ending up pretty darn uncomfortable. If you have ever breastfed lying down, for a sustained period of time (like 4 hours), you will know the numb arm/numb hip feeling well. For those who have never experienced it - it is not comfy. So I spend much of the night trying to regain feeling in my body parts. Then, she spreads out - on my side. So I spend some of the night dodging little limbs. All of this with her attached to my boob. If she simply came to bed and slept beside me as many babies do, I would happily have her there much more, but mostly, that isn't the case.
It's not ideal, and I simply could not bed-share full time - that isn't for us at all. But it has our place in our home, and our bed, each night. It means that I get a little longer in bed in the morning, and that if we are having a terrible night, at least I'm not pacing her bedroom in the cold, but warmly tucked up in bed.
And, just last week, she cuddled up to me so tightly, that I lay sleepily thinking how amazing it was to have my little baby next to me, and how wonderful she is, and how lucky I am to have her.
Then, she woke me up by yelling "BAA!"....
Do you bed share? How do you find it, especially with older babies?
