Co- (not) Sleeping

Oh, the days before baby, when W and I could luxuriate in long, back and forth decision making. Paint colors, dinner choices, outfit options, it was all so... indulgent (ha, little did we know!). So when that pregnancy test read positive, our decision-making cross-hairs narrowed in on the little being yet-to-be, and Nug's planning began.

First up, sleeping arrangement. Would she sleep in a crib, a bassinet, our bed, a crib in our room, a crib in her room...? It seemed so important, and yet, without an actual baby in our arms, so unclear. Scared of suffocating a tiny newborn, and desperate for a night's sleep without something attached to me, I wanted the bassinet route. Inversely, W was anxious for her turn at attachment and wanted Nug to come straight into our bed. We went back and forth with our just arguments (me crying, because I was a crazy pregnant lady), and settled on using a little baby corral placed in bed between us. 

The little corral. This is what every new parent looks like, right?!

It took up enough of the queen bed to make us both uncomfortable, but W could put a hand on Nug at any time and I was just relieved to be sleeping without a pregnant belly. Yet, W was still full of worry. Was Nug warm enough? Was she breathing okay? Was she awake? Asleep? Alive?! It was like all of the concern I had when pregnant about making a good baby home out of my body had now transported itself onto W, who worried about making a good baby home in our actual home.

Nug nursed often, but I somehow managed to slip into pockets of deep sleep. It was during one of those periods that I awoke to a screaming, frantic W (the details of this night are now foggy to both of us, but I will do my best to recall). 

"CAN!" (her nickname for me) she yelled.

My heart jumped from my chest before my eyes even opened. Without another word uttered, I look over to see W give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to our five-day-old daughter... in her ear. Noting that Nug was comfortably asleep and oblivious to the fire drill around her, I shout,

"She's fine, she's fine! What's wrong?!"

"I woke up and she was purple." W exclaimed, breathlessly. "I thought she stopped breathing!"

Ironically, with Nug snoozing peacefully between us, W was the only one without breath. "There's nothing wrong," I managed to calmly say, albeit confused, scared, and maybe a bit angry.

Then I fell back onto my pillow, clutched my chest, and started crying. I had been woken out of deep sleep to the notion that my brand new baby was dead. And once I realized that she was fine (she was never purple, it was W's own sleep-haze and nerves), I was pissed that my sleep was interrupted! 

We can look back at this night and laugh now. In fact, it was pretty funny almost immediately, especially the mouth-to-ear performance. But after that night, W yielded to my desire in terms of sleep arrangement. Nug was promptly moved out of the middle and to my side of the bed, then graduated to a bassinet, and then a crib.

She has been in a crib ever since, with the exception of sleeping with us when we are on the road (I'm not sure how else to do it, once her little head pops up from the pack-n-play and she sees me across the hotel room). The problem is, we've been on the road a lot: visiting grandparents, accompanying W on work trips, a few mini vacations, and of course moving here. I feel for her when she wakes up in the middle of the night in a strange place, and so I started bringing her in bed with us. W has long-since recovered from the CPR fiasco and loves snuggling with Nug in the middle of the night. I get back to sleep quicker when I bring her to bed than if I were to rock her to sleep, or let her cry it out on her own. And in the end, it just seems like the right thing to do. Why should this little person have to sleep all alone, while two grown people get the comfort of one another?

So it looks like a co-sleeping habit may be forming. Nug always goes down for bed on her own, but most nights she will end up with us. Sometimes it's 4:30am and I'm thankful that I got most of my sleep in. Sometimes it's 10:30pm, and I kinda dread sharing my bed with two other people for the next eight hours. Perhaps I should consider myself lucky: Nug generally prefers to give me her face while W gets her feet (and she does kick). However much she thrashes, I still consider this some of my favorite time.

When she finally settles in for the night, I know it because she'll have rested one hand on W and one hand on me. I curl around her and look across her dreaming face to my wife, who will be curled around her and looking at me, and we'll close our eyes, smiling together.