So it's midnight and hubby and toddler are fast asleep sprawled across our king size bed leaving me with a slither at best to sleep in; and I wonder why on earth I didn't do what I was 'supposed' to do and sleep train the toddler. As I lay hear listening to his breathing (in between the snorting coming from the husband - I mean seriously shut up man or I will punch you again!) I am reminded of those first days when we brought him home. I would lay awake all night making sure he was alive, watching his chest rise and fall.
Don't get me wrong by 4 months when teething kicked in for us I needed my sleep as did we all, and I tried the cot next to the bed, it didn't work so we bought a co-sleeper, which until this day has only been used as somewhere to keep soft toys and mobile phones! The little bugger would have none of it, he needed to be touching one of us and within striking distance of boobies! So I thought what the heck, as long as we are doing it safely we all get a better nights sleep and I don't have to get up for feeds and it's so much easier to comfort him when he is sick.
Now once we got to 6 months I found that mentioning we bed share was quite taboo and very few of my friends were doing it, in fact by the age of 1 if they were they certainly weren't sharing this information with me! Now little man has a perfectly beautiful bedroom that we painstakingly decorated before his arrival and a lovely toddler bed, so when people came around we would happily show them his room, luckily no one ever asked where he slept. I began to feel ashamed like I was doing something wrong, I was 'spoiling' my child, surely he would never learn to sleep alone and heaven forbid fall asleep without boobies!
He is now nearly 3 and do you know what I don't regret a minute, he falls asleep sandwiched between his mum and dad snuggled in warm and safe where he is his happiest. We wake in the morning to his gorgeous face and for the most part we all have a good nights sleep. We learnt to accept what works for us and that we are doing no harm so what does it matter. Well this didn't come easily or happen overnight, it has taken much agonising and encouraging words from friends and family to find our way; whether its the right way or not really doesn't matter.