Every time I see someone publish an account of their life as a co-sleeping family, the comment threads are plastered with one concern. Over and over and over again. Sex. People are very concerned about sex and where it’s happening. So, let me just assure you from the beginning, that as a co-sleeping family, all the sex that is being had by the exhausted parents of young children is not in the bedroom. Okay? Now you can focus.

When you picture a family bedroom which might include children that are older than about 2, what is your vision? Are you picturing a commune of some kind? Or maybe Charlie’s poverty-stricken family from Willy Wonka all huddled up in bed together? (That Wonka bed looks really cozy to me, by the way, but that’s beside the point). Those are really the most popular options, right? The family is probably either completely impoverished or living in a commune somewhere. But here’s another option: some of us just like co-sleeping.

Granola parenting sleeping terms which are often confused:
Co-sleeping – sleeping in the same room
Bedsharing – sleeping in the same bed

There is nothing better than the sounds of your kids gently breathing as they dream. Especially, when you’ve had a difficult day, the kind of day, that if you had access to a gigantic bounce house which you could toss these little people into, they would just end up biting holes in it and using the remnants to parachute off the roof. That kind of day. But then, they (finally) fall asleep, and they look absolutely angelic. That moment makes the stress of the whole day dissipate. I love laying in the dark, about to fall asleep, and hearing all the little breaths. I think daily about how wonderful it is that we are a co-sleeping family: myself, my husband, Dan, our 6-year-old daughter, our 1-year-old son, and, as a bonus, sometimes our 10-year-old dog, whose breath I’m more and more anxious to hear as he ages.

There was a time when families co-slept without a stigma attached – of course it wasn’t “co-sleeping” then, it was simply sleeping. It was more secure to sleep together in terms of avoiding threats of predators in wilderness, more efficient in terms of conserving warmth into one primary space within a home, and consolidated sleeping arrangements just made sense when homes weren’t as spacious as they are now. Thankfully, the threat of bear attacks during the night isn’t rampant in suburbia. In the Florida heat, we aren’t particularly concerned with keeping toasty at night. And while efficiency and space are always matters to consider, insufficient space is not an issue. What we are concerned with is closeness at night, the feeling of security for our children – even if said bears are not actually lurking, the joy of being able to see our littles sleep peacefully after a day of being utter hooligans, and the positive effect that bedroom sharing has had on our day to day life – even if it means that someone’s feet are sometimes (or always) in your face.

As new parents, we never had intentions to bedshare with our daughter for an extended period of time. We knew that she would sleep in bed with us as a newborn, but we had a crib in our bedroom, which we planned to transition our little one into when she was ready. That crib, which my husband’s parents generously gave us, was used a total of about five times (mostly when the grandparents babysat). Our daughter ended up sleeping with us until she was two, at which point we moved her into her own room.

There were too many things that we did as new parents due to peer pressure, following social norms, or just not knowing ourselves well enough as parents. Moving our daughter out of our bedroom was one of those instances. Neither she nor I were ready. She would wake up after a couple hours in her room and crawl into our bed. I would lay awake and wait for her to come in. I couldn’t help thinking of how frightening it must be crossing the house in the darkness at night with only dim night lights to guide her. I couldn’t fall asleep before she was in bed, lying by my side. As time passed, our little one would spend a bit more time in her room before joining us, sometimes until midnight, sometimes a bit later.

After our son was born, it was very difficult to adjust my attention to two children. I still have a difficult time feeling that I am not giving them enough – or what they deserve – of me, but the beginning months with two children were very overwhelming emotionally. Night time was the most difficult. I was unable to put our sweet girl to bed for the first couple of weeks. A process which had been a time that I relished more than anything. On top of that I had a never-ending supply of guilt over sleeping with one child and not the other. Our daughter would come in to bed with us around midnight. I would have her on one side and our baby boy on the other. Every time I faced one child, I felt a pang of guilt to the child whom my back was towards. But it wasn’t until our daughter was about five and her little brother was several months old and sleeping in our bed that she stopped coming in until the morning. That was perhaps the hardest of all.

I felt guilty nightly that while the three of us were together, our sweet girl was all alone. And while she never complained about it, she did comment often that it made her sad to be alone. She would often ask if she could sleep with us and we would softly answer no. But thinking back to that time is gut wrenching. How alone she must have felt. And why did we always insist on “No”? What were we so worried about? It seems that we were very concerned with following the proper social protocol, which is a strange thought, because Dan and I always tend to do what we feel is right in terms of parenting.

A few months passed of this arrangement and then a very unexpected move transpired when my sister and niece came to visit us. Because we live in a two bedroom house, the best sleeping arrangement option was to move our little girl’s bed into our room for the duration of the visit. It was the beginning of the holiday season. Everything had a festive air. Staying in our room together as a family just seemed like the perfect, cozy holiday arrangement. And it was bliss. Everyone was happy. So happy, in fact, that seven months later, the little bed is still adjacent to ours and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

It was as if this simple bit of furniture rearrangement brought an overwhelming amount of peace and warmth into our family. It wasn’t that we were unhappy before. We were happy. But the guilt of ousting one child was enormous and it made it very difficult to remain somewhat level-headed throughout the day. I was constantly trying to “make up” for that separate time at night. The move has been revolutionary for everyone’s attitudes and everyone’s feelings of familial inclusion. No one is left out. No one is scared. No one is alone. And as for that wonderful time in the morning when little brother crawls into his big sister’s bed and snuggles with her under her covers as they start laughing happily together before everyone is fully awake? Nothing can top that.

Is it easy? Not always. Putting two young children to bed simultaneously was at first easy, then challenging, and then beyond what my patience could tolerate. We’ve had to adjust our methods several times, but as long as we keep calmly moving with the wave, so to speak, rather than frantically fighting it, things go smoothly and we figure out a new rhythm which will work at a given time. We realize that adjustments will always have to be made, a new rhythm will always have to be found, because nothing in parenting or in life is everlasting.

The physical change to the house has been drastic as well. We effectively gained a whole room worth of family living space. But in comparison to the change in everyone’s attitudes, that extra space is miniscule. I know that people sometimes concern themselves with the question of “how will the kids ever sleep on their own?” In this family, we are firm believers that doing something when one is ready has a much more positive effect than being pushed into doing or learning something which one is not yet ready to understand or experience. It’s simple – when they are ready, the kids will be ready. They won’t have bad dreams nightly, they will be at peace knowing that they took all the time they needed. And we can take solace in the fact that we followed our intuitions rather than social norms. So while we know that this is not forever, we will relish this blissful time while we can. We know that it’s not for everyone, but right now, it’s perfect for us. – Irina

Related Post: An Interview with a 6-year-old Co-sleeper

Are you curious about the benefits of co-sleeping with older children? Check out this great information: Five Benefits to Co-sleeping Past Infancy