A Rod For My Back.

I’m not supposed to complain about this topic… because you know… I’ve created a ‘rod for my back’ and I ‘made my bed and now I have to lie in it’… which is a tad ironic since I am talking about co-sleeping.

Yes, my ‘not-such-a-baby-any-more-baby’ co-sleeps.

That is, he sleeps in our room, and in or near our bed.
Actually he sleeps in a cot that has one side removed and is attached to the side of our bed and has done since he was born.

His sisters also slept in our room, initially together in a cot that was pushed up against our bed, and later in their own cots next to our bed.

I ‘believe’ in co-sleeping. I believe in the benefits of co-sleeping for both the child and the parents.

I am also a ‘lazy mother’.

I don’t want to get out of bed to feed the baby, or settle the baby. Heck, once I am in bed I don’t want to get out even if the house is burning down! It’s cold, and dark and if I wake up enough to get out of bed it takes me ages to fall back to sleep again.

I’m lazy – I want to be there for my kids, I want to breastfeed but I want to do it in the easiest way possible.

Plus Muski didn’t sleep much as a baby, and anyone who has a baby who doesn’t sleep will know, you’ll do anything, sleep anywhere, if the baby will just nod off for a little while. Whatever works, works.

So yep, I’m all for co-sleeping.

Except….
I really don’t like it much…
In fact, right now, I really don’t like it at all.

It’s not just about the Small Boy. I don’t like co-sleeping with anyone, not even my husband. I’d really like a big bed and a room of my own, thanks very much.

It’s just that I don’t like being breathed on, or snored at, or cuddled while I sleep. And you see, here is where the rod comes in, I sleep in the middle, the middle of two snoring and farting males who both like to lie facing me and they breathe on me!!!!

Arrrghh!

I need my own air people.
I need MY OWN AIR!
Not air you’ve already sucked all the goodness out of and breathed back in my face.
I’ll suffocate if I don’t get my own clean, fresh, air!

Ahem… um ok…oops…. don’t know where that little outburst came from.

But anyway… the air thing aside, my newest co-sleeping pet hate is touching.

Muski likes to touch me. To be precise, he likes to run his hand up my arm, under my sleeve to my arm pit. Upppp… and down… uuuupppp… and down. He might stop and play with the wrinkly skin of my elbow on occasion just to really drive me nuts. And oh my the tears if I’m not wearing sleeves!

Just writing about it is making my skin crawl.

In my more stellar ‘Mother of Year’ moments I’ve been known to scream at my baby boy in the middle of the night, “Just stop touching me!”

Oh how mature, and of course, it is met with floods of tears, and me being lazy (see that bit above) I grit my teeth and hand over my arm just so he’ll go back to sleep and I don’t have to actually get out of bed and do something.

Hello Rod! How nice of you to drop by.

I’m not here to tell you all that you should co-sleep. I’m not looking for advice, or even sympathy.

Eventually there will be another bedroom, eventually Muski will sleep in it happily, and in the mean time, just in case you thought it was all puppy dogs and roses when it comes to parenting….

Here I am, rod firmly attached to my spine, bed most uncomfortably made, still believing in the benefits, still knowing this is better for us than the alternative non-lazy parenting options… and despite all that, I’m still complaining.

I’m definitely winning at this parenting gig right?