Three In A Bed

I love having a new baby in the house! He smells delicious (well, most of the time), he's soft and cuddly, and he makes great little noises (again, most of the time). The real treat, the best thing of all, though, is being able to cosleep again. We moved JR out of our bed after only eight months, and that turned out to be sooner than he or we wanted. I'd like to keep Tristan in with us for at least a year.

There are lots of reasons for cosleeping. Babies sleep better and safer. Studies have shown that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is greatly reduced for the breastfeeding, co-sleeping baby, when with non-smoking, sober parents in a standard adult bed with wedging dangers removed. Even parents sleep better and safer. Still half asleep, mommy can care to baby when he nudges to nurse. Restful hormones released in mother and baby through nursing then lull both gently back to sleep. There is no waking to a hungry, crying baby. I can even get baby and change him without waking up fully. There's even evidence that cosleeping babies can be awakened if the parents stop breathing and disturb them out of their apnea. When you combine this with the bonding that comes along for free, it's easy to love cosleeping. In fact, there's not one shred of evidence exists to support the widely-held notion that co-sleep is detrimental to the psychological or physical health of infants--just anecdotal claims, misconceptions, and unfounded fears. But don't just take my word for it, use google or check out this site and this site.

As good as all that is, though, those aren't the reasons I love cosleeping so much. Let's look at a diagram of our bed before we were married:

I'm represented in blue and Theresa is the anatomically correct, pink blob. As you can see, I'm on the left, Theresa's on the right, and everything is fair and balanced (in the true sense, not the Fox News sense). Now let's look at the same bed after marriage:
What's going on here!? I'm not even fully on the bed anymore. This, unmarried gentlemen, is what's referred to in the wedding vows as "or for worse". And now let's look at the same bed, but with a new baby thrown in the mix:
Much better! Harmony has been restored.

And that's why I love having three in a bed!