dailydiatribes

I have never been comfortable with my children in bed with me.  I never let them sleep with us as infants.  I was convinced I would either roll over on the baby and suffocate it or that it would fall out of bed and break its neck.  I didn't really breast feed (yes I know, I was an inadequate mother and my children will become crackheads and work at convenience stores because they ingested formula) so it was never a convenience thing to put them in bed with me at night.  I had to get up anyway!

But as they grew, they learned to find their way into our bed.  After being cuffed by me a few times in the middle of the night (I tend to wake up swinging!), they learned to go to Tim's side of the bed.  Without even waking up, he pulled them into bed and then he would come over and invade my space.  After enduring several minutes of wiggling and flailing, I would finally get up in disgust and go sleep either on the couch, or in whichever bed had been vacated by the child now in my bed.  Some nights it's like musical beds at our house!

I know I have mentioned this before, but I like to sleep on my own little island.  I don't want the bed to move at all.  I get in my corner and I stay there.  I don't want to snuggle, I don't want to spoon, I just want to go to sleep.  The problem with children in the bed is they want to get next to you and touch you.  I don't do well with that.

Last night, since Tim was gone, I let Anna sleep in my bed.  We have a king-size bed and she only weighs 55 pounds, so you would think it would be easy to sleep with her.  When I turned the lights out, she was on one side and I was on the other.  But sometime in the night, she began to worm her way toward me.  I awoke at 3:00 in the morning to find her trying to burrow underneath me.

What possesses a child to cross the vast expanse of a king size bed in the middle of the night to be close to a woman who is likely to throw a punch?  All I know is one minute I was drooling happily into my pillow and the next moment, I felt Anna's head at my side.  I pushed her away and she wormed right back, apparently in an attempt to return to the womb.  I tried to inch away from her and she followed me.  Whether Tim is at home or not, I tend to sleep on the edge of the bed, so I had very little room to move.

I kept pushing her away and she kept rolling back.  Finally, I sat up and grabbed her under the armpits and moved her back to her side.  She stayed there for about five minutes and then returned just as I was starting to get comfortable. 

I was at the end of my rope.  I picked her up, put her back on the other side of the bed and wedged two pillows between us.  I figured she would have to wake up to actually cross the barrier.  It worked, and she stayed put.  Now I was wide awake, so I laid there, twiddling my thumbs, wondering how Tim was sleeping in his nice quiet hotel room in Las Vegas.  I think it's my turn for a business trip!!