The Girl In Our Bed

When we first had Peanut we had certain ideals about how we would parent our children. We stated things we would never do and how we would react when certain situations arouse. Some of these ideals were noble and we have stuck to them to this day. Others have been tossed out the window, namely, the ideal that our babies would always sleep in their own cribs.

Peanut was a good sleeper from the young age of eight weeks till about nine months. To be quite honest, he preferred to sleep in his own bed and slept most soundly there. The standard we had set before our children were born was easy to keep. Miss Belle has been a different story. She loves, and I mean LOVES to snuggle up close to her daddy at night and sleeps perfectly contently all night when she is near us. And so the standard of getting the baby out of the room at three months went flying out the window. Then six months, then nine months then a year...and here we are nearly eighteen months later and she is still sleeping right next to us, perfectly content. We call ourselves, "accidental co-sleepers". It's never something we planned to do, it's just something that ended up happening so everyone in our home could get a good night's sleep.

There is a part of me that feels I have to apologize to people when they find out she sleeps in our bed, and it has me thinking. All the reasons I have been given about why a baby should NEVER be allowed to sleep in your bed make perfect logical sense.  But the truth is, none of the so called negative consequences have come true in the reality of a baby being there. Our marriage is better than ever, everyone in our home gets a good night's rest (most of the time), my daughter is perfectly content, and my son never has to wake up to his crying sister. And contrary to what some people may think, she won't be there until she's five. No, I don't know when she will move, but what's the harm in her being there? If anything, I think it has been a positive thing to have our baby sleep in our bed.

EVERY night, I crawl into bed and find my husband's large hand curled up around the small of my daughters back as she lay there soundly sleeping. Every night he tells me, "I just love her so much. She's just so little. I don't want her to grow up." And every night I fall in love with my husband all over again. There is nothing more manly or more fatherly than when a man is so loving towards his children. Sure it's not what we ever "planned" for our children, but it's so much better. Thank you, husband, for doing what works best for our children and family, loving them so fully and being the best father I could ever dream of. I love you.