Bed

Until two days ago, Anonybabe's toddler bed (a full-on crib on three sides with a half-guard rail on the other) was pushed up against mine and Anonyhub's. She'd fall asleep next to me, nursing and climbing and and rolling and fussing, until she finally crawled to her bed in an exhausted heap to sleep for the night. Anonyhub and I have talked about pushing her bed away from ours for months and months. Anonyhub has been ready to make our bed more of marriage bed and I thought we should do whatever seemed to bring the most contentment all around. But I kept finding reasons - some practical, some emotional - to forgo even trying to push the bed away. She needed to be able to climb in and out by herself, say, or the extended family bed thing isn't absolutely positively broke so why fix it? She was used to crawling from one bed to another in the middle of the night, wouldn't she just crawl over the edge from force of habit?

I also had a huge Greek chorus of imaginary co-sleeping advocates buzzing in my inner ear that co-sleeping is natural, separate beds are not, fears that it'll be harder to sleep because I wouldn't be able to reassure myself with a touch that she was breathing, all right. Fears that we'd lose an important connection too soon, that she'd be lonely, feel abandoned. Every couple of months we'd revisit the topic and it would ultimately end in a huffy "well, I'm not ready yet!" from me.

This past time, something I'd read and recognized about the joy of independence in children gave me pause. I think that as well the job of comforter and nurturer, it's also my job to introduce Anonybabe to a certain amount of risk and independence. Make sure she has every opportunity to develop a taste for it if that's what she so desires. And that as she gets older - at least for a while - my role as comforter will keep diminishing while my role as midwife to her independent being will keep growing.

So I sighed and acknowledged that nobody knows what's going to work for my family, including me, until I try it. If pushing the bed away went horribly, I figured, we could put it back. (I know, I know, we were just pushing the bed 2 feet away, not to China, but this was a huge symbolic leap for me.)


So we cleared away the toys from the East wall and swung the bed in an arc out and against it. Anonybabe thought this was great fun and instantly delighted in climbing up, and (once we'd spotted her a couple of times so she knew where the floor was) down. She was proud and delighted with her bed, loved it when Anonyhub sat by it and read stories to her. She leaned back on her Miss Piggy pillow, positioned her stuffed cat Francis beside her, gave contented sighs and when Anonyhub would finish a book, ask "weed moh?"

She was, however, quick to cry when we turned the light out "No..turn off...wight!" in her signature stilted cadence, and I was quick to offer her the option of lying in bed with us. Which is where she ended up falling asleep, and then we transfered her to her bed. After we'd moved her, Anonyhub gave my ass and tits a playful squeeze and said "now I can do that in my own bed without feeling weird!" rolled over, and promptly went to sleep. We haven't even cuddled since.

The next morning, Anonybabe woke up, rubbed her eyes, and announced "Annonybabe teep Anonybabe's bed!" and seemed pleased.

Ummmm...success?