stuff best described as not safe for parents

One of the side effects of baby illnesses apart from the nightmare of having to nurse cranky kids back to health is that they get used to sleeping on our bed. During their last battle with the viruses, we let them sleep on our bed so that we could make sure they were getting enough oxygen through the night.

I’ll say right off the bat that co-sleeping is a topic that’s too huge to talk about here but the key thing to note is while I agree that there’s something wonderfully intoxicating about snuggling up next to soft, juicy baby skin, we don’t do it. The reasons are threefold.

1. Babies are space hogs.

No, I’m not referring to the pigs we sent to Mars. But if you’ve ever slept next to a baby, you’d realize that it was probably the worst sleep in your life. After reading all those articles on SIDS, you’re terrified of suffocating them with your large ass so you move as close to the edge as possible without falling off. And you think they’d reciprocate the favor, but no, they somehow manage to fall asleep perpendicular to your body, right smack in the middle of the bed.

2. It’s a suicidal precedence to set if you plan to have more than one baby.

It’s ok if you have just one kid who turns out to be a straight-sleeper, but it’s physically impossible to put 5 kids and 2 adults on any bed for an entire night. Right now, we’re already struggling with 2 babies fighting us for pillow space. Also, you don’t want to explain to your first kid that he’s being banished to his own bed in order to make room for the new baby.

3. They’re the sex police.

Trust me, there will be no sexytime with a baby sleeping on the same bed. They have an instinct for this kind of thing and you certainly don’t want to spend all that money on therapy after they see daddy and mommy going at it like wild bunnies. It’s proving to be tricky enough to find time for that boom-chica-wow-wow with 2 kids in the same house, much less on the same bed.

So, back to the topic at hand. Ever since the kids tasted the awesomeness of sleeping on our bed, they’ve been hooked. Tru wakes up at 1am every night screaming for “mommy’s pillow”. Not for mommy, just my pillow. Even if I sit beside him on his bed, he’s inconsolable, right until his head touches my bed, and he goes right back to sleep without even so much as another whimper. And the whole racket obviously wakes Kirsten up, who also demands to sleep on our bed as well.

I know there’s magic fairy dust on mommy’s bed. I used to feel safest on my parents’ bed. Like nothing can touch me, not even the scariest monsters in the world. They were all hiding under my bed, but momma’s bed, it was safe.

That’s why we’re torn. We love having the kids on our bed as much as they love being on our bed. But my back doesn’t like it so much because even prisons don’t make you sleep on a 50cm strip of bed space. I wake up every morning feeling and looking like those chinese vampires that hop around with both arms outstretched. Seriously, it’s not pretty.

To my little sweetums,

You finally turned 8 months old over the weekend. 8 MONTHS! When you were first born, I spent every minute willing you to grow up faster. I would look at the clock and 5 minutes would have passed by and I would grab your father and yell “Babe, do something, anything. She’s not growing at all. She’s still wrinkly and small and screamy. GROW, BABY GIRL, GROW!” And nothing would happen. I fed you and bathed you and held you and kissed you all over and the next time I checked, only 3 weeks. It’s like I was in a time warp and it was groundhog day. All day, every day.

All you did was stare at me with those teacup pig eyes. Sometimes, when the stars aligned, you would fall asleep in my arms and the world would be perfect.

When momma was 9, I brought home a green bean which I stuffed into a soaked cotton square because my science teacher told us that it would grow into a bean sprout. Like the diligent student I was, I watered it and showered it with sunlight and sang to it. I was hoping that my psychic powers would make it grow faster but I should have known that making things grow faster is not one of my talents.

Then one day, you smiled your first smile. Not too long after that, you flipped over. Then you giggled when daddy blew at your belly. Then you learnt to grab my shirt like you would never let me go. And when I thought that it couldn’t get any better, that I was content to spend my life inhaling that intoxicating baby smell, you decided to go ahead and grow up when I was least expecting it.

baby, what baby?

Now you’re sitting up all by your lonesome and playing with toys and looking at your brother like he’s the coolest person in the world. In the grand scheme of things, 8 months may not be a big deal because one day you’re going to have your first sleepover and go to college and get married and I’m not even going to think about all that right now because the thought of it scares me.

8 months ago, mothers were telling me to “enjoy the baby moments before it sneaks away” and I was all like “yeah right, you don’t know what I’m going through and oh God, make it go faster before I lose my mind.” Then I stabbed them with a fork. In my head.

But it’s true. The fatigue and tears and depression feels like it will kill you but trust me, it goes away. And the feeling you get when you hold your baby. That feeling where your heart is about to burst and you die from soft, gooey, mushy cuteness. The feeling where you actually wish your baby will remain a baby forever. The feeling that makes you want to do it all over again (although not right now).

I want to remember what that feels like. That’s why 8 months is a big deal. Just promise me you’ll take your time to grow up ok.

With all the love in my heart and more,

Momma.