We gave up a family bed when our youngest was about two and a half years old. By that time we had been sleeping together in one bed as a family since our oldest was first born, four years earlier. We loved our family bed, but each one of us was quite ready for some more sleeping space, our own comfortable area in which to stretch out and rest without being under direct threat of flailing limbs and pinched tresses. I didn’t sleep a wink the first night we slept in our own big girl/boy beds, but both children did. And they woke up with smiles on their faces.
But sometimes, on chilly fall and winter nights, after a long day of living and loving together, we’re not quite ready to go our separate ways at bedtime. Sometimes we make a family nest and sleep in it together like a colony of rabbits. In winter we build a big fire in the wood stove, drag a million pillows and blankets down the stairs, and make the fluffiest, warmest, most inviting space to cuddle. We play games, read books, play…and sleep. Yesterday was Daddy’s birthday, so we celebrated in style in our first family nest of autumn. After a long and chilly night, I built a fire in the pre-dawn light and waited for the little ones to wake up.
