The Family Bed - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
As with most things there are good things, bad things, and ugly things about the family bed. My wife likes that she doesn't have to get up to nurse Oliver. We like the fact that Oliver gets this extra degree of closeness to us that he wouldn't experience in his crib. I get to see my wife and child curled up together every night before I go to bed. It definitely has some perks.
There are some bad things about the family bed. We can't just leave him there by himself like you can with a crib because the bed doesn't have rails. This means that we don't have as much post-bedtime free time as crib parents. To protect the bed against Oliver having a midnight accident, we have a plastic cover over our mattress. Plastic covers don't bleed off heat like a mattress can. If Oliver does have an accident, then sheets that need to be washed are much larger. And there are times when I have to contort my body to sleep because Oliver has decided to be a perpendicular baby instead of a paralell baby. These are little things, but they are annoying.
And then you have the ugly things about the family bed. Oliver doesn't really sleep through the night like your average crib baby. Since our sleep cycles are synching up, it means that I wake when he stirs. He'll get up a couple of times a night usually to nurse. Since we are doing early potty training, that means that at least one and usually more of those wake-ups involve taking off the diaper, putting the baby on the potty as he screams in my ear, waiting until he goes, putting the diaper back on, giving him to mommy to nurse back down, and dumping his dump in the toilet before going back to bed to sleep. Add teething to the equation and you have a couple of nights like last night when he was waking every hour or so. My wife, bless her heart, got most of them, but it means that she and I were rather grumpy this morning.
The family bed is a good idea. It makes me feel closer to my family. But geez, if there aren't nights when I wouldn't rather be sleeping in the tub.
There are some bad things about the family bed. We can't just leave him there by himself like you can with a crib because the bed doesn't have rails. This means that we don't have as much post-bedtime free time as crib parents. To protect the bed against Oliver having a midnight accident, we have a plastic cover over our mattress. Plastic covers don't bleed off heat like a mattress can. If Oliver does have an accident, then sheets that need to be washed are much larger. And there are times when I have to contort my body to sleep because Oliver has decided to be a perpendicular baby instead of a paralell baby. These are little things, but they are annoying.
And then you have the ugly things about the family bed. Oliver doesn't really sleep through the night like your average crib baby. Since our sleep cycles are synching up, it means that I wake when he stirs. He'll get up a couple of times a night usually to nurse. Since we are doing early potty training, that means that at least one and usually more of those wake-ups involve taking off the diaper, putting the baby on the potty as he screams in my ear, waiting until he goes, putting the diaper back on, giving him to mommy to nurse back down, and dumping his dump in the toilet before going back to bed to sleep. Add teething to the equation and you have a couple of nights like last night when he was waking every hour or so. My wife, bless her heart, got most of them, but it means that she and I were rather grumpy this morning.
The family bed is a good idea. It makes me feel closer to my family. But geez, if there aren't nights when I wouldn't rather be sleeping in the tub.
posted by mypetrock at 10:26 AM
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