Adventures in Attachment Parenting

So ever since Winston was born he has slept with me. There was no question about it. This, at our house, is not normally a problem since our mattress is on the floor (Bella did a head dive when she was 11 months). At mom's, it is a completely different story. We usually do alright on a normal bed at a normal height; I either stay with him the whole time while he is sleeping or as soon as I hear the slightest movement I fly like the speed of light up stairs to check it out. This means that I essentially never get a real relaxing break. I am either unconsicous (sleeping with him), trapped in a room - forced to be quite (subtitles are a whole another story), or so on edge and ready to fly that I knew this day had to be coming soon. How could we have survived almost three years like this, in a normal bed?

It started today when I was downstairs checking email and my mom came down. We started talking and I hear a brief rustling, didnt sound like anything to serious. I casually asked my mom to go check. She did. Then I hear on the monitor.....WINSTON NO.

She caught him, right before he did a half asleep nose dive off the bed. While most people know I am nuts, my mom is nuts too. Well that was the end of it. "He can't sleep like that anymore", she said, " We have to do something, put him on the floor, get a little air bed". The unacceptable options rattled on. We finally decided that after all this time we were going to put a mattress on the floor here. This is were the fun began.

It sounded simple enough, right? Well think again. We got right to it. We pulled the mattress on the floor, next to the box spring on the frame. So now picture the mattress with the box spring and frame flush on one side, a small space between the mattress and the wall on the other, a drop to the floor at the foot of the bed and a desk at the head of the bed. The first problem with this set up was the hole were the chair should sit in the desk. "He could easily slide down there and hurt" we both conclude. Well stuff it with pillows. Next problem, the TV on the desk. "He could pull it down on himself, you know how he has been obsessed with turning TVs on and off" I offer. This simply wont do. We decide now that there is now choice but to move the mattress and then move the desk to another side of the room. (Keep in mind we are trying to do this all while managing the two children). We get out our "EZ moves" and start to it. Not so bad. We get everything situated and get the mattress back on the floor after a valiant effort of shoving a bizillion pound mattress on a thick carpenting. My mom then calls to my attention the that 6 inch gap between one side of the bed and the wall. What to do; pillows, a guard rail? I decide that pillows should be the way to go, after all what if Winston flipped over the guard rail and did something horrible to his neck in that itty bitty space and was paralzed forever. We get the pillows and stuff them down in. Everybody looks happily, everything looks good and I have to say......What if he smothered himself in the pillows?

Hey nobody said this parenting thing was easy right? Espically for the worry wort. I have often wondered how other AP parents co-sleep safely. Are they all as nuts as me?