Guys, I’m talking about co-sleeping. For the past year I’ve had a chunky little bedfellow. And I need you to stop judging me about it.

If you weren’t judging me, then we cool. But let me expound a bit anyway for everyone who has felt the need to tell me, unsolicited and unprompted, that I should get my kid out of my bed stat.

For the first two years of his life not only did Jake not sleep in our bed, he didn’t even sleep in our room. Not even on night one home from the hospital. Proof positive that the nutman wasn’t always our roommate:

Truth be told, Jake has been a crappy sleeper since birth. We had a little luck because of the automatic Rock n Play, but once he outgrew it the transition to his crib was rocky. Side note: despite its questionable reputation this item was a godsend and without it I surely would have had a nervous breakdown that first year. No, my kid didn’t have flathead or torticollis. But once he was able to operate the controls by himself it was time for him to move on up, but instead of his crib most of year 2 he much preferred to sleep in his pack and play in the living room and we indulged him.

Eventually he was just too big for the portable crib and we transitioned him to his big cribby, which he didn’t care for. At first he would wake up a time or two each night, I’d lull him back to sleep on the couch, and return him to the crib.

Around age 2.5 these wakeups became increasingly frequent… often every (damn) hour. EVERY. DAMN. HOUR.

Guys, I was exhausted. So I took a trip to target, bought a bed rail, and made myself the monkey in the middle betwixt my husband and my son.

And I slept 7 hours that night. Seven glorious hours. I may have had a fat little foot kick me in the belly a time or two, or I may have been woken up by Jake demanding that I “close the gate!” ie spoon him and wrap my free arm around him, but guys… 7 hours!! That was huge.

That being said, I do try and put the boy into his crib, now a big boy bed, every night, but invariably some time later – maybe four hours, maybe ten minutes – I have a banana man climbing into my bed. And I let him in, because at the end of the day I NEED SLEEP… and its not like he’ll be 15 and still climbing into my bed, right?