Family Bed

I am about to go off and after that babycakes shall resume regular ol' blogging. 1..2..3...hold on....

We have a family bed. End of story. Sleep is a parenting decision. There is no right way to sleep or wrong way to sleep. There are safe ways to sleep. That is what other people should focus their concern on.

It's funny because the day I posted about the difficulties of parenting together I was planning to post about our family bed after that. I was feeling confident that co-sleeping and having a family bed was actually reaching into the mainstream and facing more and more acceptance. Some people put their babies in cribs. Some people keep their babies in their bed. M. and I keep our baby in our bed. I was confident that the constant judgement was somehow slipping away.

I guess I was wrong.

This is our parenting decision. It's working for us as a family. It's not something that our tiny tyrant toddler is forcing us to do. We all like sleeping together. If it stops working before Finn naturally transitions to his own sleep space, we will make the necessary changes.

We have legitimate reasons for having a family bed. Our son is a very immature sleeper and we've found he does best when he sleeps with us and in our bed. Finn is also still nursing overnight and I have no intention of getting out of bed to feed him. With my job I can't sacrifice what little sleep I get.

And we like it.

It's snuggly. It's sweet. He's not going to sleep with us forever, or even for a significant period of his life. He's going to slowly move away from us and all we'll have left are our memories of our sweet little boy. I will not sacrifice this time because anyone tells me we SHOULD put him into a crib. He is my boy and it's my job to let go of him, but not right now.

I'm seriously tired of explaining myself. Over and over and over and over and over. Yet here I am doing it again.

The life of a co-sleeping family bed parent is difficult. You face judgement left and right. You're told that you're going to kill your baby, that you're permenantly damaging his ability to sleep on his own, that you're forming bad habits, that you'll NEVER get your kid out of your bed, that you're creating a MONSTER. Few see the family bed as just another way to sleep. Few support making it a safe and healthy experience. It's a bad habit and those who practice it must be told to STOP...NOW. It seems to be some people's civic duty to inform those of us who are clearly ignorant and irresponsible about our plight.

Please respect our decisions. Please BACK OFF.

I'm sincerly happy for the people out there that can put their baby in a crib and have a full night of blissful sleep and lots of wonderful couples bonding as you snuggle into your comfy bed together. I'm glad that is working for your family, but please respect that what works for you may not work for others and it's not your place to prostletize to others about the superority of your decisions.

We did not start on this parenting journey intending to have a family bed. Finn was going to be in his crib by six months at the latest. Things just didn't work out that way. We did what we needed to do to survive and we've continued doing it because it's working for all of us.

I also know that M. and I won't be bed sharing with Finn forever and that our time will come. In the meantime Finn goes to sleep at 7 pm and we go to bed at 10 pm, so we have three wonderful hours to watch Gossip Girl, plot world domination, debate the plight of birth in this country, discuss our ideas about discipline and pat ourselves on the back about our little boy.

It's enough for now.

Unstoppable Force Meet Immovable Object

M. and I spent 15 years perfecting our relationship before Finn came along. We were happily ensconced in our cocoon of relational bliss. Somehow I thought all of that work would transfer over to parenting together. We had it all down pat so surely parenting would be a snap. No problem.

Uh, yeah.

I feel like we're starting all over again. Year sixteen is really year one in our parenting relationship. The bumps and bruises from those early years when we were ironing things out are back and looming. It's hard.

I have to be honest that our disagreements were there before, but we'd found a way to live with them. We had our dysfunctions but we'd worked through them and they didn't impact the bigger picture. Never let anyone lie to you, living with another human being is hard, hard work. I'm starting to think that parenting with another human being is even harder.

Sometimes I feel like things would be better if we could be in our own little worlds. M. could do things her way in her world and I could do things my way and everything would be okay. Except that is so, so, SO wrong because I'm not including a very important part of the equation. Finn. He would be the one who would have to negotiate between the worlds.

This post is not the beginning of the end. It's just that we're struggling and I think struggling is normal. M. would laugh at me and ask if I had really expected to get through this parenting thing without having to actually work. I might answer "yes" because in a way I felt like we are so good together it's inevitable that we'd be the best, most kick-ass-on-the-same-page-always-agreeing parents on the face of this earth.

But we're not. What we are is stubborn, rock solid and loving, and that will get us through even the worst days. And like our relationship, our parenting together will be hard and challenging, but we will only get better and better at it.

Vacay-shun!

I'm sitting in a hotel room using crappy TV internet because...we are having our first family vacation. I've decided the best way to go somewhere entirely non-exotic is to go north to Canada because it's kind of like home but just slightly different. Which is why we're in Vancouver, BC.

M. is conferencing and doula-ing it up and Finn and I are flying solo. So far we've petted goats, ridden a tiny train and this morning we went to a totally awesome spray park. I think we've done all this for under $20 bucks (Canadian, which is probably 19.95 US).

I love Vancouver! It's also an incredibly walk-able city, which is what we've been doing. Lots of walking and taking the Smart Buggy out. Strangely enough I take the Smart Buggy everywhere in Seattle and few every comment on it. Here I've had numerous discussions about our funky stroller.

Finn's sleep is in the toilet but we're hanging onto some semblence of a schedule. We'll have a very tired little boy when we get home.

Speaking of which, we head stateside tomorrow. Usually I'm happy to head home but we've had such a great time I'm a bit sad to go.

Right now Finner is napping on the king size bed and I'm relaxing a bit before we head to the pool then out for a bit of window shopping.

Did I say that I LOVE VANCOUVER???? Eh?

Greediness

Life is like a set of scales. You keep some sort of balance by shifting weights from side to side. I think before you have a child you feel that things are unbalanced so you move things around. Cleaning the house balances going to a movie, doing the bills balances exercising balances vacation balances work balances...and so on...

Then baby comes along and basically someone drops a ton of bricks on one side and everything flies in all directions, leaving you a little stunned as you scramble to pick up the pieces of your old life and combine them with your new.

Sometimes I feel like M. and I are living in a perpetual state of imbalance. Of course I've always felt that way. We were never responsible enough, never rested enough, never fit enough. Finn has made me realize that we were a hell of a lot better off than we are now.

I think what happens when you live in a perpetual state of imbalance is you constantly make greedy choices to get what you need. It's like you've been starved and someone hands you a chocolate bar. Never mind that the chocolate is probably going to be the last thing you ever eat because your body can't manage it, you're going to eat it and enjoy it. This is why when M. and I finally get some time without the boy, some precious ME time, we grab it and gobble it up, even if it sometimes means staying up too late or spending too much money or doing things we know we will pay for later.

I can't tell you how much better things are since our ton of bricks came screaming into our lives. Our scales are taped together, jerry-rigged in some sort of strange manner to make things a little more even, and we've combined the old and the new into a motley collage of a life. We still don't have balance and I don't know if by the time Finn is less needy and more independent if we'll remember how to get that balance back.

This is all a long way of saying that sometimes I stay up late when I know I should be going to bed just because I want to. So there. Take that, life!

First Popsicle

First Posicle, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

Reading on the Potty

Reading on the Potty, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

Okay, this is really really cute.

Finn Loves Beads

Finn Loves Beads, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

This is my latest favorite pic. So cute and so grown up!

Summer Vacation...

Seems babycakes is having a bit of a summer vacation. The sun and warm(ish) weather has turned my fancy to picnics and trips to the park. Finn has gone from walking to pretty much running and has absolutely no impulse control, so we spend a lot of time chasing.

Finn's latest thing is yelling. Despite us signing with him, it seems to be his primary mode of communication. I think he's working up to that 18 month language explosion and there's a lot of frustration pent up in there. We're trying to ramp up the sign language to relieve some of it.

M. isn't working, which is hard on the budget but nice on family life. We've had a ton of together time and I love every moment of it. We're looking forward to a trip up north, camping and DtD coming for a visit (yay). Then fall comes and the elections and maybe an entirely new direction for our country.

Mainly, summer is here and life rolls on.