End of a Sleepy Era?

End of a Sleepy Era?

Friday, 21 December 2012

Last night, for the first time in her life, Emmie slept in her own space.

She didn’t move far away - I made her a nest alongside our bed – but she was very definitely separate.

It felt like I had lost an arm to start with, and then it felt like I had got blind drunk and for the first time in I don’t know when I slept like I was dead.

We have discussed co-sleeping before at LLL meetings, and our leader talked about how you “lose” your deepest level of sleep when you co-sleep, which is the safeguard nature puts in place to stop you squishing your offspring. I can confirm that she was talking truth because I found that level of sleep again last night and oh-my-god-how-I-missed-it!!!!

Emmie - typically when you plan these kinds of big changes - is in the grips of a dreadful bout of teething coupled with the remains of a stubborn cold. All of which led me to have dreams of warthogs snuffling round the bed. She was blissfully unaware of her own nasal orchestrations and also slept like a log. She woke twice wanting a drink and then instead of doing what I feared which was freaking the fuck out about the fact that somehow mum was above her rather than beside her, she rolled onto her side, cuddled her favourite cushion and dropped straight back into snuffles and snores.

Part of me was a little hurt at that. Part of me was hoping that she would wail and complain and need to be gathered up and snuggled.

So was Keith. Despite his daily belly aching about being kicked in the head by super sharp toddler toenails he was threatening to bring her into bed with us for chuddles.

The part of me that was upset at Emmie leaving us was the part that felt I had let her down. My intention with co-sleeping was that she would choose when she moved into her own bed, not that I would get pregnant again so soon and face the growing (geddit) dilemma of fitting a toddler, man and Weeble into a 4’ 6” bed.

Perhaps I made the biggest mistake of all though in thinking that Emmie needed the power of speech in order to tell us the time had come.

Her actions last night spoke volumes: She enjoyed her space.

If I’m honest, I did too.