'I Have A Confession, I Love Sleeping In Bed With My Kid. Is This Terrible?'
A single mum has opened up about how she sleeps in her four-year-old son’s bed each night – and the reaction to her confession is incredibly heartwarming.
The parent took to Reddit’s r/Parenting to reveal she loves sleeping in bed with her child. She said her son is “fiercely independent” and, from the age of one, has been putting himself to sleep.
But recently he had his tonsils and adenoids removed, so she wanted to keep an eye on him post-surgery for a few nights – and a week after surgery they both came down with flu, so she continued to sleep in his bed.
“It is now 3 months later and I am still sleeping in his bed at night. I get a lotttttt of judgement for this as he is ‘too old’ for mom to be sleeping in bed with him or ‘it’s gone on too long’. The secret is. I love it,” she wrote.
“I sleep great and I do love the little cuddles in the morning. As I said, I’m a solo parent so I do not have another parents’ wishes to contend with/a partner who is pushing for me to ‘come back to our bed’.”
The mum said that “everyone seems to think I’ve messed up a good thing of him putting himself to sleep, but I know before too long he’ll be wanting his space back”. She concluded: “Is this terrible?”
Bed-sharing is common, we just don’t talk about it
Bed-sharing is a divisive topic in some circles – particularly for those who co-sleep with either very young babies (it’s generally frowned upon because of safety risks) or older children.
Yet it’s “super common”, sleep expert Lauren Peacock previously told HuffPost UK.
Kourtney Kardashian, Julia Fox, and Christina Ricci have admitted they do it.
“Studies show that in the UK, by the time a baby is three months old, half will have bed-shared with a parent at some point,” added Peacock.
Of the families she speaks to in her practice, around 20% bed-share all or most of the time, and a further 40-50% do so some of the time.
The reaction to the mum’s Reddit post was extremely heartwarming
Perhaps surprisingly (we are talking about the internet, after all), pretty much all of the comments were positive and encouraged bed-sharing with little ones.
“Reading this while in bed with my 4 and 2 year old! If it works for you both, that’s all that matters,” said one parent.
Another added: “This has been normal since the dawn of time. All primates sleep with their young. What you’re describing is the most natural thing in the world, alternative points of view come from social conditioning.
“Enjoy your baby as long as you can. This is literally the dream.”
But perhaps the most beautiful response came from user chavan7, who said: “Let them crawl into your bed a little longer. Let them wrap their little arms around you in the night.
“One day, you’ll be 80, lying in the stillness of your home, and you’ll close your eyes just to remember the weight of their small body against yours and you’d give anything to go back and be with your babies again.
“These moments – these sacred, sleepy moments – are the ones your heart will ache for when the house is quiet and their childhood has long passed. Never feel guilty for that. Enjoy it while you can.”
Nope, definitely not crying.