how I accidentally became a cosleeping parent. for a time.

I was so confused by people who slept with their children... What about the baby's safety and your privacy? Everything the doctors and internets tell you is to not put baby to sleep with pillows or blankets and well my bed has both! How did you put the baby down for the night but still have some sort of freedom to watch a movie or whatever two floors below? I didn't come from a house where we were allowed in my parent's bed. Like ever. And then when Letty was about fourteen months she repeatedly slept in bed with us from about 2 am till morning, just because we valued sleep and she was such a pain. So I suppose I was a co-sleeper before I even knew it? I'll have a slice of humble pie please! But even then I didn't consider us co-sleeping parents, I just felt we were in survival mode and she was over a year old and SIDS was not longer a concern and so on. And on.

Eventually we broke her of that habit, well before her second birthday. David never woke up during the night (yes thank you God and amen) and so that just never happened. The first time he ever slept in bed with anyone ever was actually in Maine just recently and that wasn't Matt's favorite so it was a once and done thing.

Then enter Dominic. And here all the cliches are coming true. He is my baby. He is my last. I am trying to soak up every second and remember all the things I want to remember and just enjoying it all. So when he wakes up once or twice a night it really doesn't bother me like it did with Letty. I go get him and I feed him and then I put him back in his crib..... until about three months ago. I started finding myself nodding off while sitting up and I thought well now this can't be safe. He could roll right off the boppy! And you can then see the natural progression now right? When he wakes at 1 pm and I lay down to feed him between Matt and I in our king sized bed obviously it's quite easy for me to fall back asleep before I put him back. Of course when I woke up and saw him there I about died. I couldn't fall back asleep I was so upset with myself that I could have killed him. I was all over my phone reading about SIDS and co-sleeping and the like. And yet the very next night I did it again. And again. I always knew he was there, I could feel his breathing.... And here is the kicker - we both slept so much better! We slept in later. It was nice. And so here.... little ole me. A co-sleeper. I still don't understand how people can co-sleep and yet still have a life after 8 pm but that's fine.

He went down originally every night in his crib until his first wake up call later that night, sometimes 11, sometimes 1. And then he just stayed with us until we got up for the day (although recently he seems to want to crawl all over the place so he's been spending more time in his crib than with us). I always pull the sheet down to his waist, and I always put pillows next to Matt as a buffer since he is a bit more of a heavy sleeper than I am. And there we stay. Till morning. When we went away to the beach and to Maine I wasn't terribly worried about him, because I knew he would sleep as long as I was beside him. He doesn't seem to notice the where it's the who.

And it's kinda nice.

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