Co-sleeping Angst

 

I want to say from the outset that I am pro-co-sleeping, just not with my child, or if with my child, then not my husband.

My husband was hospitalised for a significant length of time when Riley was 4. During that I time brought Riley into our bed to sleep and there he stayed. I loved having the extra time just being near him and I think my husband did too.

As I get older, sleep is harder and harder for me, for about a year I had to have one, or on a really bad night, two sleeping tablets to get to sleep. Last year I stopped taking sleeping tablets and have gone herbal, but sleep is still really hard for me. Riley has got much bigger too and has ADHD is his sleep, or so it seems. My husband is snoring as soon as his head hits the pillow every night. Me, I would be slowly drifting into sleep when a hand, or more often a foot from Riley would hit me across the face and "bye, bye sleep".

Both my husband and I agreed that when Riley turned eight we would turf him out of our bed and into his. We talked about this with Riley for at least six months before his birthday and leading up to his birthday he would tell people he was getting a new bed for his birthday.

We all went bed shopping and Riley found a huge bed with a desk underneath it and that's what we bought. It took my husband and a friend four nights to assemble this beast. When it was ready for use we told Riley and he looked at us like we were crazy. He had forgotten that apart from a really cool place to have Nerf wars from, he was also meant to sleep in it. After some convincing we managed to get him to begrudgingly agree to the idea.

Riley loves his new bed, he thinks it is awesome. He loves to watch DVDs up there and clutter the desk below with a wide range of minutiae, completely unrelated to learning, he just does not like to sleep in it.  Many nights there are tears, but every night there is the question, "Can I sleep in your bed? I feel very nasty, because it is my fault he ended up in our bed to start with, but I am sleeping much better and so is he, so I have to stay strong on this one...most of the time.