Look, I am a soft creature of Polish descent. I am all for snuggling IF:
1) it’s not a stranger in the grocery store
2) it’s my chocolate-scented yacht-owning mythical Belgian lover
3) it’s my kids at bedtime, in THEIR beds
Yay! Love! Affection! Bonding! Super super!
BUT:
I Am Not Down Wit Da “family bed”, my peeps.
There. I said it.
I know. I’m going to hell. God maintains a special hell for parents who confess to feeding their children cupcakes for dinner or parents who can’t handle the freakin’ family bed. I will be there. I have picked out my flaming suite. 1118B, the ‘B’ being for Bad to the Bone Mommy. I think 1119B and 1121B are still available, if you’re interested. 1121B has a great view of Satan pitchforking mommies and daddies who laughed out loud at the baby sling.
Don’t get me wrong here. I was lucky that my breasts cooperated, so I was able to breastfeed both girls and snuggle them into milky bliss until they were each 24 months old or so. Then I closed up shop and posted a “YOU MUST BE AT MOST THREE YEARS OLD TO SUCKLE UNLESS YOU ARE A CHOCOLATE-SCENTED BELGIAN LOVER” sign on my Victoria’s Secret bra.
Victoria’s true secret is that she never whipped out her ta-tas and then forgot they were still hangin’ loose when the FedEx guy popped by. FedSex? No, the FedEx Man did not ring twice. He was horrified, and faked my signature in the truck.
And then there was that time when my lactating breasts dropped into a British man’s face on a transatlantic flight. I was fetching something out of the overhead compartment, and had no clue my nursing bra was wide open. He got quite an eyeful, poor chap. Like the oxygen masks, my breasts did not inflate, and he made no attempt to strap them onto his face.
Anyway, back to the “family bed.” Hey, I know it works for some people. I want whatever’s in your families’ best interest. If you are Down Wit Da Family Bed, rock on! You are stronger, tougher, more extroverted souls than I, and I bow to you.
I woke up at 2am with my clammy perpendicular sleepers shoving me off the bed. H-Belle was stark naked and freezing. (Her choice.) Her tiny chubby freezing feet were pressed where the sun don’t shine, and where I don’t need it to shine. YOWZA. The other perpendicular sleeper was clothed, but she was annoying perpendicular sleeper #1.
MY CHILDREN DISLIKE EACH OTHER SO MUCH THEY ACTUALLY FIGHT IN THEIR SLEEP. SLEEP-BICKERING.
“SToooooOOOOOP IT, SOPHIE! THE WOLF WITH THE GREEN FACE! I MEAN IT!”
“YOU STOP IT! I WANT CARROTS! OW! GET OFF MY CARROTS! THE CARROT PILLOWS ARE COLD! I HATE YOU!”
Why did I not scoop them up and deposit them back in their beds? Because Mommy Dearest had taken a Tylenol PM-type thing that put her in the world of cold carrots and wolves with green faces too. So we all spent the night miserably chewing up each other’s personal space.
In the morning, I was ready to hand them off to anyone riding a motor vehicle down the street. They don’t understand. To them, no big deal. After all, Wordgirl comes on at 7am on PBS, so there’s something to look forward to. That, and my dear friend who takes them to school with her kids in her massive car-thing. She buys them all donuts on Fridays. One can get over a crappy night’s sleep pretty easily if Wordgirl and donuts are all you have to look forward to.
My Friday is all about unemployment insurance, defaulted student loans, economic hardship and unemployment deferment forms, talking to “Rosemary” in East India about said forms, paying bills I can’t actually pay, and trying to identify the wretched stink in the kitchen. One needs a good rest to handle such matters.
I LIKE sleeping alone. I LIKE it. I am an introvert, and we are desperate for whatever quiet time and alone time we can carve out of this loud, raging, cold-feet-in-your-crotch-at-2am world. Desperation sets in quickly!
I was on the verge of weeping upon awakening. There were lunches to pack (I hiss like a maimed cobra at this anyway), shoes to be dug out from under filthy couches, clothing to fight about, dogs to feed and let out into the muddy backyard of tropical New England violence. Where are the scientists? No need to go to Bolivia.
The girls are going to Daddy’s tonight. I am going to bed at 8. As in, 8am. As in, NOW. I am going back to bed, my peeps. No, you may not join me, unless you are warm and chocolate-scented and can fake a Belgian accent. And “Rosemary” in India will have to wait. I am a broken woman. Fi, fi, on the “family bed.” I am the walking family dead. Pray for me.
And get your apps in for suites 1119B and 1121B, if you fit the profile. Our potluck casseroles will always be so nice and toasty hot.
{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m not down with it either unless it happens in the middle of the night and I am too tired to move them. That isn’t why I’m going to hell though.
You can visit me in the wing where parents call their kids assholes. Don’t get me wrong, I never ever say it to their face and I also call them lots of lovely things. But when they are acting like a-holes, I will tell my husband, “You know your kid? He’s acting like an asshole”. You know, when he is acting that way, not when he isn’t. Still, never saw June tell Ward, “Ward, dear, Wally’s acting like an asshole today”. Since that is my parenting yardstick, I know I’m falling short.
I will see you there. I am not feeding cupcakes, but as we speak, my kids are eating chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, I do not do the family bed. I don’t even have one toy in my bedroom or any pictures of the kids in there. I know, it’s totally against all rules of good parents. And I cannot do that baby sling, I give a slight chuckle when I see them. Sorry, to all those who absolutely love them, but when you are trying to stuff a 2 year old in it, I can’t help it.
I have a hook and eye lock on my four year old’s door. I tell my family & all babysitters it was because he was sleeping walking (which was true for like 2 weeks last summer.) Now he has a little potty in there, so when he wakes up pre-dawn, I don’t have to participate. I am now downstairs “not blogging” drinking hot tea. I retrieve him at 9am for O’s and Diego. The two year old is even more stuck in crib. I’ve been doing this for so long that they do not even cry until 9. My place in mommy hell will be far hotter (or colder!!) than yours. Back to my tea…
I will be in room 1121B because I HATE (yeah, I know, use your indoor voice…) to share my bed with anyone but the hubby. And that’s only because he learned the hard way to stay on his side of the bed (read elbow to the ribs two nights in a row).
I totally can’t do the sling thing either. I had twins and they were so early that by the time they got out of the hospital and much pumping horror later my milk was dried up and I never got that opportunity…but anyways. I love days when I get to go back to bed. They are so rare around here.
I hope things get better for you…Tylenol PM and all…
jenn bringing the funny!
ah, you make me laugh.
thank you.
If I had to face your bills, etc., every day, I’d be back in bed at 8:00 am on a regular basis.
I love the idea of sleeping with my children…just not the reality of sleeping with my children. Our 3 year old has a cold and ended up sleeping with us last night and I woke up feeling like I may very well be the Gatekeeper of Hell himself. So, I’m with ya.
A funny aside…I remember when I was nursing and pumpinig. I was at work (on the 14th floor in downtown Minneapolis). I was all hooked up to the pump facing the huge windows overlooking downtown. I was just hangin’ emptying my utters when, suddenly, I see a face in the window! Freakin’ window washers! I am surprised the man didn’t plummet to his death after what he had seen.
I am cracking up about the 8 a.m. bedtime. Mostly because that was MY bedtime today as Daughter #1 ate dry chocolate flakes in front of the TV and Daughter #2 slept in her own crib, in her own room, with the door closed. No family beds here, no ma’am.
And I have to thank you with my whole heart for the traumatic boob stories. Breasts have never been so funny before!
I’m a good mom and soooooo not down wit da family bed. When my kids were little I was all about the 7:30 bed time so I could have some freaking alone time. You’re not going to hell.
Jenn,
I am delurking for the first time since 2005….but Lucifer, move over- the family bed is just not an idea that I can embrace either. I hope you’re sleeping well already (it’s 9:30)….miss you and hope to see you the next time I come your way….Alyssa.
I don’t like the family bed either. I can hardly tolerate my husband encroaching on my space, never mind small children whose feet seem to have sort of cooter homing device. Where the sun don’t shine, indeed.
Also? I just gave the toddler a double-chocolate cookie. Not exactly for breakfast, because she had a banana first. More like a nutritionally defunct chaser.
Well, I’m off to book my suite in hell, before all the good ones are taken. Sleep well.
I am with you on the family bed. The girls were each kicked out when they were weaned and that was that. They are only allowed to snuggle in the morning anytime after 6am. If they come in at 5:59 am, they are sent back to bed. I am not a morning person but I can tolerate snuggling in bed after 6am.
I love my kids (of course) but nighttime parenting sucks. I really don’t want to see their cute little faces until morning. Preferably late morning.
Introverts of the world UNITE! Well…separately of course…
I would sleep in twin beds like Dick and Laura on the Dick Van Dyke Show, except it would ruin my marriage. Kid #1 loves her own space – in bed with the door closed. Kid #2 seeks physical contact 24×7.
I can’t believe the adjoining suites are full already! Maybe I can get in across the hall?
1. Chocolate Pop Tarts for breakfast today.
2. Would gladly embrace the “separate bedrooms” policy of ancient royals, or even the Dick Van Dyke twin beds. Yes, I don’t even like sharing a bed with my (6’4″, sprawling, snoring, farting) husband, much less the kids.
3. My son is currently playing with a jagged pointy stick, with which he has managed to hit himself in the face twice. I’m getting ready to take it away, but I have important blog commenting to do first.
Jenn, I’m a total hippie mom and love family bed, slings and all those things attachment parents get sanctimonious about…but you write so kindly, humorously and openly that I hereby nominate you to broker future arguments between self-righteous parents on all sides of these issues.
Or not. You don’t really need another thing on your plate, do you?
Sending hugs from a stranger.
I’ll put my name in for 1121B. However I give my kids dorrito’s instead of cupcakes for breakfast. I HATE the family bed as well. There have been many times I have just said fuck it and took the alarm clock and went and slept on the couch leaving my nice cozy bed to my daughter and husband. Lucky for us my son has not yet learned that getting in bed with us is an option. I’m sure it is only a matter of time. My daughter is a smart little shit too. She waits until she knows we are good and asleep lacking the energy to fight with her to get her back in her own bed.
I am SO with you on the family bed — my 3-year-old daughter has never come into my bed, but my 5-year-old son spent a period from about the ages of 3 to 4 where he came in my bed EVERY NIGHT and slept perpendicularly between us.
Sure, it’s a king-sized bed and has lots of room — BUT THAT”S WHY WE LIKE IT!!! No room for pint-sized bed-smugglers, I say.
I spent four nights last week scrunched into a hospital bed wrapped around a two-and-a-half-year-old with an IV. The crappy sleep all bent funny and pressed up against the cold hard bed rails was almost as bad as the worrying about my sick kid. When she was well enough to come home, I collapsed into my own bed for ten hours.
They hog your bed? You slip into theirs and snooze, while they battle away. While not a good permanent solution, certainly a decent option.
Who thought up the “family bed” thing, anyway? And when? And why? When we were little kids in the `70s, I never heard of such a silly, awkward concept. Is this really the norm these days?
Anyway, get some sleep, Jenn–you deserve it!
Yeah. BOTH my girls still beg to sleep in my bed. For reference, they are 14 and 18, respectively.
Keep on fighting the good fight, Jenn-O-Matic. It’s a losing proposition, but you can’t just give up, right?
Also, call me when you wake up!
I’m SO with you on this. Once my kids legs are longer than my forearm, they can get the hell out. Also, I totally fed Thomas a cupcake yesterday for lunch. Yay for fun parents!
Welcome Neighbor! I’ve already reserved 1117B. I did it a couple years ago when I yelled, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” to my then-two year old after he’d clogged the toilet with a whole roll of unrolled toilet paper.
Oh, and I’ve fed him peanut butter and jelly sanwiches every night for going on two weeks straight. Maybe they’re nutritionally better than cupcakes, but not every freakin’ night.
Yeah, I only give up the bed space if A) I’m too tired to be aware the space is being invaded, B) if there’s dangerous weather afoot or C) my alarm is set to go off in less than an hour and then I steal some snuggles.
When you get up, check out the first half of JK Rowling’s speech at the Harvard commencement. The second half — about imagination — is kinda gnarly, but I think the first half — about failure — will do your heart good. Or inspire a terrific blog screed.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91232541
Until my son was 5, I had to share my bedroom with him and I was sleeping in a twin sized bed. As soon as he was old enough to know his numbers he learned that he was NOT allowed to crawl into my bed until the first number on the clock was a 7 or bigger! I’ve got a whole SLEW of reasons why I’m going to be in mommy hell… meals in front of the TV anyone?
Karina, actually not sleeping with your kids is the weird thing. Most of the planet still has a family bed and in the west we only started sleeping separately about 100 years ago.
Now, I love Jenn’s blog and think she is hilarious and I do not care where anyone’s kids sleep other than mine, but if all you commenters don’t like sanctimonious attachment parents (who I also dislike) maybe you should also try to be a bit less angry and vituperative about other people’s parenting choices.
I might love my mother more if she had ever fed me cupcakes for a meal
Family bed? I have enough difficulty sharing with another adult. As does he probably, as I am in favour of sleeping horizontally.
I have my kids so trained against the family bed that they actually don’t want to sleep in our bed – EVER. Even when they are sick and I have offered, they will take a snuggle and then ask to be tucked back into their own bed. I don’t know how I managed it but I am so grateful I did. I don’t even like sharing the (king-sized) bed w/my lovely but loudly snoring hubbie. Most nights he sleeps on the couch in the family room (mind you, it’s not necessarily on purpose – he usually falls asleep there and just doesn’t bother getting up to come to bed). I LOVE sleeping alone! So I will now reserve my room along with you without regret.
I’m not down with the family bed either. As babies, my kids kept me so sleep deprived that I am very protective of my sleep now that I can finally get some.
And, I doubt you’ll be going to hell after nursing for two years. TWO YEARS? REALLY? I can’t imagine. You deserve a whole mess of get out of Hell free cards for that.
This infertile thanks you for the laugh. Reading your blog is therapy for me. It’s like reliving my childhood through the eyes of my mother. Or something like that. It most likely doesn’t give you warm fuzzies to know that your sleep deprivation or misery gives me a chuckle, but it is just so true to life–wonderful and shitastic all in one.
P.S. I also hate cuddling, and am sure I will loathe the family bed.
I know I come across as some sort of family bed guru b/c my son is almost 4 and has (shhhhh) neversleptanywherebutinourbed. . .AND, my oldest is such a lovely sleeper that I still let her sneak into her dad’s side after he’s gone to work.
BUT. . .
my middle daughter is like a wriggly snake on caffeine who sometimes likes to pee on her prey. SO. . .she was on a mattress on the floor next to our bed before she was a year. Love her but can’t sleep with her. Hope that doesn’t scar her too badly.
OMG, I’m laughing so hard I think I hurt myself – at both the post and the comments. I actually do the family bed (and did the sling), not to mention organics and the chemical free thing (yeah, ok, I’m totally crunchy – it surprises me as much as anyone), but I do keep a little bitty tv with an Angelina Ballerina disk in it in the bedroom, and on mornings when I’m really tired, I have been known to bring in a bag of honey nut o’s (organic, of course) and hand it to the kids dry (not even in a bowl, mind you) along with a cup of juice to share and call it breakfast while I go back to bed. The youngest started fending for herself on the cereal/cracker shelf before she was 2. So move over, baby, I like it hot!
We have a family-ish bed and ummm, I am exhausted. But it’s better (maybe?) than screaming children. I don’t know, whatever works I say. And I don’t think anyone has addressed anon#6, but that’s just lame. LAME-O We all have crap to deal with, snarky comments (anon ones at that, double lame-o) don’t help.
Family bed, no. Slings, no. Today, I have a sinus infection and told my two year olds that they could not sit on my lap anymore because the crap in my head was killing me. We spent the rest of the afternoon periodically looking up my nose to see if we could find the crabs. What was that empty suite again, I think it has my name on it.
Funny, funny, so true, as usual!
Oh no fam bed for me. I realize in other countries, families may have to share a bed because they only Have one bed…but oh not me. I do NOT like getting punched in the face by a toddler mid-slumber.
I feel ya. I am so sorry the stress is so heavy. My house? Same stresses, for real. You are not alone, quite literally. If you find a solution, let me know what it is?
I am a snuggler. husband and toddler son, not so much.
My husband would slap you a high five for sharing his sentiment on the family bed.
The matter was discussed in length before we ever had kids.Perhaps even before we were married.
The only exception is the nursing baby…mostly because my husband wouldn’t dare harp on me when i’m the one getting up every 2 hours, scratch that, hour to nurse the wailing angry badger while he sleeps undisturbed next to us… although with our first son he did make the mistake of whining at 4am about the cat box needing to be cleaned out as i tried to change a screaming baby’s diaper while my breasts leaked all over my feet and the floor. he won’t make that mistake again.
sleep well and enjoy the night to yourself
No family bed and I bitch like hell on the (thankfully) rare occasions when L (my youngest, now aged 4) has slept in our bed… She will sleep, as will my husband, but I sure as hell won’t thanks to the kicking, punching and space-snatching, leaving me without covers on about 1.5 inches of mattress and my knee on the wooden surround of our bed… Nope, no family beds in this house…
And L (yes, her again) had fries and ketchup followed by two bowls of Ben&Jerry’s Cookie Dough icecream for dinner tonight…
I reckon it’s a pretty good job I hate the cold… I’m going to Bad Mommy hell!
I am with you on the NEED for sleep. This is precisely why I have to sleep with both my high need children. I am 25 and people think I am nuts for having 2 kids in a bed/attached crib.
One is 22 mos. and the other 5 mos. It is the only way I can actually get any sleep whatsoever, so I think that it is the childs needs and the parents needs that determine what the parent does with their bed and sleep!
Each parent knows when it is too much for them and their children, and how best to get each of their children to sleep well, whether in a family bed, a mattress on the floor, a crib, whatever works!!
My children are smarter than I am, and have learned to wait until I’m asleep to come creeping into my bed. They do it without waking me up, and only later do I realize there are strange small people under my covers.
How much did I hate sharing a bed with my husband? Instead of twin beds or separate bedrooms, I’m moving to the next state over. He kicks at the covers until they get all untucked and bunched up, and get this – he is physiologically incapable of sleeping with a top sheet. I blame his mother.
My rule is:
If you are breastfeeding and it will intereupt my sleep more to have to physciaclly get up and feed you- then you are welcome to share my bed.
If the dairy barn is closed, get out of my bed!
That being said- mine are sneaky and crawl in when I’m too tired to do anything about it, and then I wake up with them using my butt as a pillow. I was too tired to move them last week and ended up sleeping on the living room floor!
I know- if I had trained them to sleep on their own from day one, I wouldn’t have this trouble now- but I think I’d rather have been a well rested newborn mommy than a well rested preschool mom.
Love that you make me laugh. Thanks for sharing! And no, that’s not hell you’re going to. It’s bed and enjoy it!
Between being on call as a labor and delivery nurse and 3 kids in 6 years I lived in a constant state of sleep deprivation. When the 4th child came along I read the book Babywise. Had her and the following 2 babies (yes, that adds up to 6) sleeping through the night in their own beds by the time they were around 10 weeks old! I went from the insanity of baby led parenting to a schedule and not only did it save me but it made for pleasant kids.
But if you want to get really controversial, why would anyone ever let their dog sleep with them?