Crap. We’re now THAT family.

We’re a co-sleeping family. We’ve always been one, we’ve always been vocal about why we like it so much, and how other people shouldn’t generalize or stereotype it.

After the blanket “NO! CO-SLEEPING IS SOOOO DANGEROUS!” statements, the next thing that bothers me most is people saying that they don’t want their spouse having to sleep somewhere else. Or, even worse, the mom who goes and sleeps in the kid’s bed. I know it’s not for everyone, but it bothers me when people brush all co-sleepers with that brush. But maybe John just had me spoiled. We’ve been co-sleeping for almost NINE years with no real problems. Once the kids started sleeping through the night we always moved them to their own beds in their own rooms, but most mornings we would still wake up with a kid or two in our bed.

Then came Mason.
(Why does it seem like that phrase keeps coming out of my mouth so often??)

Mason has this weird obsession with John. OK, not weird, but the boy is definitely obsessed with his daddy. Unless the boys is tired or hungry he wants daddy. John comes home and Mason goes nuts yelling “Da da! Da da! Da da! HEY! Da da! Da da!” usually accompanied with clapping and bouncing. Cute, right?

The not cute part.
Mason will not sleep if he knows John is near. He’d wake to get in bed with us around 12 to finish out the night and nurse, but then he’d realize, “hey! there’s my daddy!” and that was that. There was no more sleeping. For anyone. It’d take another hour or two to get him to settle back down enough to go to sleep, and then it’d start all over at 3 or 4 when he’d wake again. None of us were getting a decent amount of sleep. We couldn’t even just move him out of our room. He still wakes to nurse 2-3 times a night, and if you don’t get him within five minutes of him waking to eat he starts bouncing and screaming until you do. So that sort of nixed putting him in with the kids because then Zach and Ryan wouldn’t be getting the sleep they need to function at school.

To solve the problem John did something that we have never done before. He moved his bed to the couch. As in he sleeps on the couch every night and Mason sleeps in our bed with me. We have now become one of my most hated co-sleeping stereotypes. The sad part is that it’s working so well for all of us that we’re kinda staying with the current arrangement. John’s getting a good night’s sleep, and Mason and I are also getting a good night of sleep.