The Co-Sleeper Is Gone … And Time Marches On

Next to my side of the bed there is a large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards.  On the other side of that large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards there is room to open the drawers on the left side of my dresser.  In between there is space for my discarded shoes and socks to breathe without having to tussle with Mike’s.

What is not on my side of the bed any longer is the co-sleeper.

For those unfamiliar with this piece of modern baby-raising apparatus, the co-sleeper is a not particularly attractive crib-like thing that attaches to the side of the bed.  The idea is to more or less sleep with your baby while theoretically eliminating the risk of inadvertently crushing her.  (Couldn’t one still throw a sleep-heavy, errant arm on top of the innocent sleeping child? I wonder.  Best, I suppose, not to contemplate the possibility, as I’m not a limbs-flinging sort of sleeper anyhow.)

Given my love of the middle road, the co-sleeper is the perfect invention, a detente in the polarized sleeping-with-baby debate, a way to hush Lily back to sleep in the middle of the night without ever having to leave the cocoon of my down duvet wrapped around me in the hours since kicking Mike out of bed for snoring.

Just as Lily has grown up with the scent and sound of me sleeping a foot away, I have come to love the feel of her within arm’s reach.  I have become certain that there is nothing better upon awakening than propping up on an elbow to watch my angel sleep.  Except, perhaps, that moment when her eyes pop open and she greets me with a big, sunny morning grin.

Only now the co-sleeper is gone, the victim of increasing baby mass and the fact that I have been dying to get to those dresser drawers for eight months now and just can’t wait any longer.

And in that once longed-for space is a big empty hole.  Sort of like the one in my heart.

Big Girl Cribs

Maybe, I tell myself, if Lily hadn’t developed the habit of awakening at 3:30 a.m. for a rather loud conversation with herself she could have stayed a bit longer.  And maybe if I hold her sweet sleeping form in my lap for half an hour or more at bedtime it will cut down on the sharp pang of separation as I carry her to her crib.  Even if it also dooms me to a decade or so of being stuck sitting with my daughter while she falls asleep because — or so the baby books I don’t trust tell me — she will not know how to fall asleep without me next to her.  Yeah, you tell her that when she lets out a banshee yowl of anger and disappointment whenever I try to abandon her while still awake in any sleep-friendly spot.

Still, whatever else I may think, I know that it was time to put away the co-sleeper.

Lily is just about the age Jake was when I wrote my first YogaMamaMe post.  I was floundering then, in a way I hadn’t floundered yet in motherhood.  Like Jake then, Lily now is at that age where I can see, feel, smell — yes, I can taste — growing independence.  And I want it.

Oh how sick I became of sliding off the foot of the bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, holding my breath lest I disturb Lily in her co-sleeper.  Oh how frustrated I became sorting through the tangled bodies of my tee-shirts, the dresser drawer pressed right up to the side of the ungainly co-sleeper.  And oh how I wished for a night undisturbed by Lily’s babble and snorts.

Okay, still wishing for the last, since the interjection of a hallway and a few open bedroom doors hardly scratches the surface of my Mommy-radar.

But my point remains.  Babies are hard work.  And I, for one, have held out for about as long as I can.

I want Lily to crawl, even though I know it will open up a whole new amusement park of dangers for her — places to stick her little fingers, endless detritus to sample in her mouth, heavy pieces of furniture under which to disappear — leaving me with even less time to, say, go to the bathroom unaccompanied by my progeny.

I want her to walk and to eat solid food on her own and to sit on the floor narrating books to herself the way Jake does.  I love my diaper bag and I hate it at the same time.  I relish my mornings with Lily even as I count down the weeks until I have full days to get my work done and get on with my career.

I want it all until I see my bed sitting simple and unadorned by a baby co-sleeper, a big, accusing, infant-less empty space next to it.

And then I want to grab onto the wispy memories of a tiny baby girl who already is no more.

It’s Sort of a Yin Yang Thing

What I’m describing, I think, is just the way sadness is wrapped up in every happy moment, like the tangled roots of two very different trees.

We like to divide our lives neatly into happy and not-so-happy.  Moments to strive for and moments to avoid.

Yoga teaches us that it’s not that simple.  To get to those moments when our hearts soar, we have to wind through some difficult paths.  And it’s not like we get to the end of the path and — hey!  It’s the Emerald City, the Pearly Gates, Shangri-La!  We pass through the happy moments just like the sad ones because they are all part of the same path.

Recognizing this truth — being carried forward by it — meant my life was no longer comprised of energetic efforts to be happy all the time.  Sure, moving every few years — Boston to New York to DC to Williamsburg to St. Louis to West Hollywood to Long Beach to (phew!) Asheville — brought me to better places each time.   But after a few months the usual sorrows seemed to find me, no matter where I was or what I was doing.  Those 10-mile Sunday morning runs along the Potomac?  I’m still in awe of myself for once having done them, but I never did manage to outpace the loneliness that crept in once I went home and finished reading the Times sprawled on the futon couch.

In other words, we waste an awful lot of time trying to avoid the cadences of life.  And in doing so — in striving for the really big warms fuzzies — we miss the pockets of joy hidden in the corners of even dark days.

Life isn’t made up of big chunks of good and bad.  It’s bigger than that, more fluid, variegated and swirling like a mass of fingerpaints poured next to each other on a sheet of white paper.  For a few moments you can see each separate color — green snaking into yellow, blue reaching like ghostly fingers into red.  And then they start to blur and blend into one muddy mess.

You can look at that glob of paint on the paper and try to make something of it without getting your fingers dirty — try really hard to manipulate it into something that suits you.  Or you can dive in, smush your fingers around, and find joy in the mess.

So, yeah I’m sad that Lily is no longer sleeping next to me.  But I’m also pretty happy about the little bit of space it has opened up in my life.  I don’t want her to go to daycare full time.  But I sure do want to have more time to write.  I don’t want my kids to grow up.  But I want to watch movies curled up on the couch with them, to read the books that they are reading, to choose colleges with them and if I’m lucky chat about crushes and watch them grow into people I like as well as love.

It’s a mess, this parenting thing, a big, muddy collision of fingerpaints.  But that’s only because it’s a looking glass into what life is all about.

Sun Salutations — Moving Through It

Sun salutations seem right here.  They are about movement.  They include asanas that may be uncomfortable settled next to asanas that may bring comfort.

Mostly, though, they are about honoring the sun that makes the earth move, the force far larger than ourselves that sets the Universe singing.  Each movement is about embracing, opening, surrendering.  And, at the end of a round, you feel at peace.

I offer Surya Namaskar B because it provides the most challenges, including Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I), a pose that is not filled with comfort for pretty much anyone I know.  But choose whichever series suits you best at this particular moment of your life.

Surya Namaskar B Instructions

Tagged as: babies growing up, co-sleeping, yoga and motherhood