[Sam Cree]

" "I have to sleep in Daddy's room." A long silence was broken at last by his shaky little voice: "The big sissy."

When my kids were little, at bedtime, they often told my wife and I that we were "lucky," that we got to sleep with someone. It was kind of cute that they said that. 'Course they soon took to bringing one of the dogs to bed with them, which the dog loved.

And there have been plenty of nights when one kid would get in bed with us for the night. No one minded, it's kind of sad those days are over.

[2Jedismom]

I have never told my boys they couldn't get in the bed with us in the night. And there has never been a problem with one of them constantly wanting to do it, since they got old enough to sleep in their own beds. Now and then, maybe...or when one of them is ill. But there is no power struggle at all.

As a matter of fact, I was one of those moms that put the kids in the bed with me from the time they were newborns. Steve slept in the other room (and our marriage lived through it gasp!) until they were old enough to sleep all night. Then we gradually put them in the crib until they were sleeping in it all night.

Done right, newborns sleeping in with mom is the natural way to do it. You have to make sure you don't take any medication that might impair your ability to sense your child in the night, and certainly not drink, not even a glass of wine. And the husband can't sleep in with the baby because he doesn't have that maternal sense of awareness. (I did have Steve stay in the bed sometimes, but I was always between him and the baby).

I just figured if the Lord intended the baby to be in a crib down the hall, he would have made my boobs long enough to reach down there. He didn't.