Snuggle me. Please.
Posted by Isabel on October 23rd, 2007. Filed under: Back in the Day, My Sweet Babboo, They're just my family.Like any little kid, when I woke up from a nightmare I would instantly go to my parents room looking for comfort. Naturally my mom would wake up and ask me what was wrong. I’d explain to her about my nightmare while she’d hold me and tell me everything was alright. After she had calmed me down a bit I’d ask if I could stay in their bed for the rest of the night.
Never in the history of my little life was I allowed to get sleep in my parents bed with them. If I was lucky my mom would make a little bed out of blankets next to their bed, but never in their bed.
If I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I was sick, my mom would make herself a little bed next to my bed and sleep next to me there. But never ever were any of us allowed to sleep in their bed.
It was just a rule they had. And dude, they stuck to it. In all my years I never recall a time when I slept with my parents in their bed at night. Nor do I recall any of my siblings being allowed to sleep in their bed either.
When I was pregnant with Babboo I read all the books that said how unsafe co-sleeping was. I read about suffocation and other scary things. The King and I didn’t come up with any specific plans about whether or not we’d co-sleep once the kid was born. I don’t even think we discussed it. But in my mind, I didn’t think we’d do it.
And then Babboo was born. And I learned that getting up in the middle of the night to breastfeed your kid is hard. And waking up at the crack of dawn is even harder. I found that I could breastfeed him while cozied up in bed. I also learned that if Babboo woke up too early in the morning that he’d go back to sleep if I just brought him into the bed with us.
We also learned that we love Babboo to pieces and we love to snuggle him and be close to him at all times of the day and the night.
Which means we liked having him in our bed. It made life easier.
Or rather, it made life easier for a bit. While he didn’t sleep with us every night, eventually Babboo got a little bigger and started to kick more and so he stopped sleeping with us at all.
It seems that the only time Babboo sleeps in our bed is on the weekends. It’s our little way to trick him into sleeping just a little bit longer so that mommy and daddy don’t want to jump off the balcony due to lack of sleep.
The last few weekends Babboo has been sleeping later and later. He even stayed in bed longer then the both of us this last Saturday. And even when he does wake up, he wants to stay in the bed and just hang out by himself.
Knowing how much we like to snuggle Babboo makes me wonder why I was never allowed in my parents bed. Maybe they’re just old skool and people didn’t do that back then. Maybe it’s not as much fun as your kids get older.
So tell me, were you allowed to sleep with your parents when you were a kid? And if so, did you like it? As a kid I always imagined I would have liked it.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:37 am
I used to have horrible nightmares as a child. I would sleep on my parents floors. There really was no room in their bed, but it was comforting.
We allow our kids to snuggle in bed with us but never to sleep unless they are very sick and I don’t dare to be away.
It’s a personal choice of boundaries that Jon and I wanted because we don’t have a lot of alone time. It works for us. I might feel differently if any of my kids suffered like I did, though.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:58 am
I was allowed in my parents’ bed only rarely, but I don’t think I asked very often. Mostly it was after having a nightmare. My dad would let me in bed, but my mom wouldn’t, but maybe I just never asked her. Dad did everything for us at night: water, nightmares, vomiting. He was a good sport.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:10 am
Whenever my brother or I woke up in the night, we would transfer ourselves to our parents bed, and on weekends would all often be crammed into the “big bed”. This went on for years – I can remember my brother, at least (aah, convenient big sister memories) sleeping there when he was in school, and perhaps I did too. (Of course, my parents ended up divorcing years later, so I’m not sure that letting your kids monopolise your bed for years is a great thing for your marriage! It was lovely as a kid though.)
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:17 am
Mum and Dad divorced when I was 4 and quite often I would sleep in the bed with either one of them if I was scared or could not sleep.
I sometimes even sleep in my Mum’s bed when I am staying with her and I am 31.
There’s nothing like your Mum’s heartbeat.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:07 am
Maybe I did when I was Evan’s age but I don’t remember ever doing it except maybe once or twice. I usually slept in a pallet on the floor if there was a storm/nightmare situation. My parents never slept in my room, so if I slept with them there wouldn’t have been room for all 3 of us (queen bed).
I am so glad to see Babboo is still using a pacifier! Whew! (so is Evan)
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I used to want to jump in bed with my parents every morning, so they made a rule: I could get in bed with them at 6AM. I realize now this was an ingenious way of getting me to learn to tell time and also sparing them some shut-eye.
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:38 pm
After a nightmare it was always my Dad who was the comforter… my Mom NEVER EVER would be the one to wake up tell me its OK and ask if I needed company for a bit… it got to the point where as a kid I never even bothered trying to wake her up.
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I sometimes had nightmares and slept with my parents as a kid. And sometimes, we all–my brother, my mom, my dad, and I–would pile up together on Saturday morning before breakfast. It was fun, but we kids had our own beds and we were expected to sleep in them.
Cosleeping was one of those “nevers” that I uttered before having Al. Heh. We’re STILL cosleeping, and we’re still loving it. I’m not sure how long we’ll keep it up, but I’ve stopped worrying about what’s “right” and what other people think. Nighttime is the best part of my day.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
When I was growing up my dad worked nights. I would fall asleep with my mom in their bed and then when my dad came home he would carry me into my own. Some nights I was awake enough to have a little conversation with my dad during this and I loved that. This went on until I was about 7 and my sister was born.
In sixth grade I started getting really intense nightmares. My bedroom at that time was in our basement. The nightmares got so bad that I started spending every night on my mom and dad’s floor. After a few weeks of that we put another twin bed in my sister’s room and I slept there until the nightmares stopped a few months later.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I don’t so much remember being able to snuggle and sleep with my parents. I do remember my sister doing that though. And with me as well. My sister had a hard time sleeping by herself for years. And my dad traveled a lot. So she’d get to sleep with my mom. Except they had a water bed and anytime she slept on the water bed she’d pee in it.
So it didn’t take too long for Mom to pawn her off on me. She never peed in the bed with me thank goodness. But eventually I grew tired of her as well and tried to dutch oven her to death.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:13 pm
I was sometimes allowed to sleep in my parents’ bed if I had a nightmare. I think sometimes my parents would let me fall asleep with them, and then my dad would carry me back to my own bed.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I don’t think I was forbidden to sleep in my parents’ bed, but I can’t remember ever doing it. When I had a nightmare or sleepwalked, I would just lie down on the floor next to their bed and sleep there. I slept on my mom’s floor a lot, I was an insomniac even as a kid, and being up all night by myself, I’d freak myself out thinking about witches and serial killers in the woods coming to get me. Obviously they would never think to look for me on the floor of mom’s room.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I don’t remember sleeping in my parents’ bed very often… we weren’t allowed to hang out in there much. In fact, it still makes me feel kind of rebellious to go in their bedroom when I visit!
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I don’t think I ever slept in my parents’ bed. Actually, their room was off-limits.
That being said, I felt the same way you did with our second son. He got up every two hours on the nose and it was just easier to nurse him in bed. He’d be cozy and I could get the much needed sleep.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I don’t remember ever sleeping in my parents bed. My sister had nightmares for a long time and she would sleep in this little cubby hole in the wall. My little brother also had nightmare for years and would sleep on a couch at the end of their bed. But, except for when they were tiny babies and it was early in the morning, I don’t think any of us have ever slept in their bed.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
My mom BEGGED my brother and I to sleep in her bed. She is a single mom, so being in there by herself could get lonley. When we were younger, sometimes we’d camp out in her huge king sized bed and watch movies and eat snacks and then all just pass out. It was kind of funny that I had to tell her when I got to a certain age that I was getting too old to still sleep in her bed.
I know that with Zachary, he’d like to lay down on the couch or take a nap on the ‘big’ bed, but after a while, he never wanted to sleep in his own bed and it became a problem. So Shaun had to finally just tell hm that he couldn’t sleep in daddy’s bed anymore. It was kind of a hard habit to break, but now he’s ok with sleeping in his own bed.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:04 pm
I wasn’t allowed to sleep in my parents bed, while they were both in there. My dad worked really early in the morning, so sometimes after he left, my sister and I would sneak into bed with my mom. I don’t know if it was an “old skool” thing about sleeping in the bed or if it was because they only had a full size bed. They just graduated to a queen size a couple of years ago after 35 years of marriage. Who knows? I would ask my mom, but she’s out of town at a conference for work. My parents are so old skool that I can’t even get them to get cell phones so I can call them with important stuff like this!
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Like a couple of the others, my parents’ room was off-limits. I don’t think it even occurred to me to try and sleep in their bed.
All three of the kids were (and sometimes) still are. Allison (the not so much a baby anymore) tries to sleep with us every chance she can get.
Sometimes we all pile into the bed on Saturday morning and just have some family snuggle time.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:29 pm
If I was sick or had a nightmare, my mom would come back with me and snuggle in my bed until I fell asleep.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:49 pm
My dad is a firefighter and therefore spends about two nights away from home a week. On those nights, if I or a sibling had a hard time sleeping, one of us were allowed to sleep with my mom. But never when both of them were home.
When the youngest of us, Donna, was five, she often climbed into bed with me if she woke up at night, and I was surprised at how good it felt to comfort her.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I’m noticing a lot of ladies, and no so many guys have commented yet. Maybe its just me, or maybe its kind of a guy thing, but the co-sleeping with a child and wife doesn’t really sit too particularly well with me. I’m not averse to having a crib in the bedroom, but I don’t really want to be sleeping in the same bed, presumably with my child between my wife and I.
That said, growing up, on occasion I think we were allowed to sleep in mom and dad’s bed with them if we had a particularly bad nightmare, but that was very very few and far between. We did, however, have a habit of all climbing in my parents bed (me and my 2 brothers) on Saturday and Sunday mornings and just hanging out and sometimes reading the Sunday paper.
For the times that we were sick, my parents had a chaise lounge chair in their bedroom that was kind of our ’sick bed’ if we weren’t going to be able to make it to the bathroom to puke from our own room successfully.
So I guess I’m left wondering a little bit…do guys shy away from the whole co-sleeping thing a little more? Is it because they aren’t the ones with the endless supply of baby-go-juice in their chest? Is it partially a worry about the ability to be intimate with your spouse without being a little weirded out about your kid normally being there?
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I did, but only because it was just me and my mom. And dude, when you’re as big of a scaredy cat as I am, it’s a hard habit to break. I still hate sleeping alone. That’s why I got married
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I honestly don’t remember. I don’t remember ever asking. I do remember waking my mom up in the middle of the night after nightmares, but I think she always just took me back to my bed. I really don’t think it ever occurred to me to want to sleep in their bed.
Nowadays, though, when I wake up from a nightmare, the first thing I do is crawl across the bed and snuggle up with Tim.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I dont think we ever slept in my parents bed – I dont think I was forbidden, but I dont remember ever doing it.
Now, my girls dont really ever sleep in our bed – but they do come to snuggle on weekend mornings. Makes me wish we had a bigger bed so we could all fit comfortably. The girls usually fight over who gets to lay next to Daddy since he’s at work so much during the week.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I did sleep in my parents bed when I was little – I don’t really remember, but my parents shared that fact with me when my wife and went “Baby Wise” on my children and taught them that their bed was for sleeping – period.
Now of course when my kids are sick or scared they can come in – but like your Mom – we eventually send them back into their room.
Good topic – Ron.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Maybe parents were stricter about their space back then? I remember not only NOT being allowed to sleep in mom & dad’s bed – my brother & I weren’t even allowed in their room unless one of them was in there.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I really don’t remember even going into my parents room in the middle of the night. Not that we weren’t allowed to or anything, I just don’t remember ever actually doing it.
I feel safe saying that if I had, my parents probably would have tried to comfort me first but if I wanted to, would have let me climb in the bed. Not as an every night thing though.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:07 pm
I was NEVER allowed to sleep with my parents, not as a newborn, not ever. It didn’t even occur to me! BUT if my dad was out of town my mom would let me lie there with her chatting in bed for hours, and I just adored that special snuggly time. My dad would have KILLED me if I’d gone in there – he was very old school and British and proper
With our upcoming arrival though, we haven’t ruled out co-sleeping, but haven’t committed to it either…we’re committed to whatever will make the baby sleep rather than to a specific rigid plan.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:30 am
that has to be the sweetest picture EVER!!
I remember loving my parents bed. SOMETIMES they let me lay between them just before bedtime, but I could NEVER sleep there. CJ sleeps with us STILL on almost a nightly basis. I can’t give up my snuggle time!
October 24th, 2007 at 2:06 am
I don’t remember. It was possible that I never desired to sleep in their bed. I have ONE memory of climbing into bed with my mom one morning and I was not kicked out, as I recall.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I don’t remember if I ever slept in my parents bed, so I’m guessing no…
We co-slept with our first boy until he got too big and did the same with our second. I agree with you, it just made things much easier.
October 25th, 2007 at 1:21 am
I was never allowed in my parents’ bed and neither were my siblings. If I was scared, I would go wake up my mom who would gently encourage me to sing a Primary song. Even when sick, I was solo in my own bed.
I guess my parents are old skool Americans like yours. I read that in Japan moms sleep in their kids beds with them, sometimes until they’re as old as 5.
October 25th, 2007 at 3:25 am
It was just me and my mom…and I would always make up excuses to sleep in her bed (and they always worked)
Now as a parent, T is always welcome to come sleep with me if he wakes up in the middle of the night. (I figure it won’t be long before he wants nothing to do with me, so I’m trying to soak it all up while I can!)