Do you co-sleep with your child? If you do, then this post might just be for you. If you don’t then you might get a glimpse of the adventure you have managed to avoid successfully. And if you don’t belong to either category, you might just see how life might be on the other side. The bottom line is, I’m going to talk about co-sleeping with your child, no holds barred. Or, as I would like to call it the hilarious side of co-sleeping with your child.

Co-sleeping with your child redefines your entire concept of sleep.

When my daughter was born, we went through the whole shebang of buying a nice cosy crib for her to sleep in. I must add I was a bit sceptical about putting too much money on it but the husband went all out and bought one that even I felt was a little too expensive. Anyway. So, M was born and we brought her home. For the first week, we followed the bed to crib and crib to bed routine quite sincerely until I just gave up.

When you have to feed a newborn every 2 hours, not to mention change her ever so often, the short walks to and from the crib could be exhausting. No prices for guessing then that I gave up the crib fantasy pretty soon and we have been co-sleeping ever since.

If you have been navigating the alleys of social media for a while then you must have seen the exaggerated sketches of life with a kid. More precisely, the sketches of sharing your bed with your child. Those funny co-sleeping memes? Let me tell you a little something about those. They are all true and not exaggerated at all. They are a window to our world of co-sleeping with a kid.

Sure it is heartwarming when those tiny human beings that came out of you hug you tight. They also look like angels when asleep. The silence without anyone calling mummy or daddy 25 million times at the end of a long exhausting day, is priceless. But this is just the prelude because the night is their’s to wreak havoc. So, when a parent tells you, they haven’t slept peacefully in years, believe them. And buy them a pint too but essentially believe them.

Co-sleeping with a child is anything but dull. You have a new adventure every day.

A couple of years ago, I was travelling to work in my company transport when I overheard two of my colleagues sitting behind me talk about sleeping with their kids. One of them was saying how anytime she and her husband got a bit romantic, her kid would wake up making them fumble as if they have been discovered by their parents. At that point, I just turned to her and said I hear you sister. Those are but one of the perils of co-sleeping. But it’s not just that.

Sleeping with a kid next to you is like sleeping with a tiny kicking machine which could hit you anywhere without a moments notice. Let’s just say, if sleeping with a kid were a sport, it would be an adventure sport. Today, I shall share with you a few truths of sleeping with your child.

The hilarious side of cosleeping with your child

Sleeping on the edge

One of the things about co-sleeping with your child is that you always are relegated to the tiniest little corner of the bed. It doesn’t matter how wide your bed is, your child will invariably occupy the bigger portion of the bed while you and your partner hold on for dear life on whatever space available. It makes you wonder how a person who is not even one third your size could occupy more than 2 thirds of your bed.

Around the world in one night

If around the world in 80 days were to be condensed to around the world in one night then that’s what kids do. You might put them to bed in one position at the start of the night but by the time they wake up, they would have made 360-degree turns several times around the bed. So, while they travel the bed at night, it’s the parents who keep waking up to bring back the child to the right position from wherever they would have managed to reach lest they fall off the bed. You can imagine how undisturbed a parent’s sleep is then.

What the blanket!

A kid staying under the blanket willingly the entire night is a rarity. Mostly what happens is they keep projectile kicking the blankets away while as a parent you keep trying to cover them. I have spent countless nights holding the blanket above M’s legs waiting to stealthily cover her once she drifts into a deep sleep but she always gets to know somehow.

Let’s talk

If one fine day you plan to put your kid to sleep and then spend some time talking to your partner, forget about that. Your kid will invariably keep waking up 100 million times throughout the night. They have a sixth sense which tells them that mummy and daddy are together and believe it to be their birthright to intrude.

Human alarm clocks

Remember how on weekends you slept in late? That’s how most parents talk to each other. Kids have this tendency to wake up early on weekends and if you co-sleep with them, they will wake you up too. In fact, they won’t stop until you do.

Sleeping with Messi

No, don’t take it that way. It’s just that the kicks which seem so cute when your kid is in your womb become painful when that kid is out and sleeping next to you. There is no place in your body where you won’t be kicked. From your stomach to your face, kids make you ready for life under torture by kicking you incessantly each night.

When strangling tiny hands mean love

Every child usually has a quirk while sleeping and it almost always involves holding on to some part of your body while you sleep. My daughter, for example, has to put her hand on my neck else she can’t sleep. Needless to say, it’s anything but comfortable but that’s just what comes with the package. Some days it’s like I’m her punching bag for the night.

Uninterrupted sleep a delusion

As long as you are co-sleeping with your child, you cannot have undisturbed sleep. You just can’t. I mean if you are waking up at regular intervals to cover them or bring them back to position, how can sleep be anything but irregular?

Looking at all these reasons it must sound bad enough but the truth is they will grow out of it. As cliched as it sounds, we will miss them once they move to their own beds leaving all the space on our own. That space which we now covet will become an emptiness. Well, becoming a parent does that to you no matter how rational you try to be. The trick perhaps is to enjoy their kicks and maybe even write a post on the hilarious side effects of co-sleeping while it lasts. Well, anything to survive, I say.

Tell me, do you have any interesting anecdotes of co-sleeping with your child?