I’d like to think our ability to get the co-sleeper assembled (albeit standing on its side in a corner of our bedroom until needed) somewhat balances out my cavalier attitude toward having Mike drive two and a half hours to Charlotte to visit IKEA on Thursday night — three days before my due date.
To be honest, my only concern about him taking the trip was that I couldn’t figure out a way to do it with him. For all the laxity we’ve shown in actually preparing for the new baby, the one regret I have is not planning a day trip to Charlotte to visit Trader Joe’s. A set-up co-sleeper I could do without. Washed infant clothes? — they were washed a couple of years ago. But a lack of tart dried Montgomery cherries to tide me through those shut-in weeks? Akin to being without newborn diapers (something I am proud to report I purchased a full two weeks ago).
At any rate, I knew that if I did go into labor Mike would just have to turn right around and sweat out the drive home while I lay on the couch and hoped I had enough episodes of Sesame Street TiVo’d to keep Jake occupied. More importantly, I knew I wasn’t going to go into labor. I was just frustrated that I couldn’t take the chance with a leisurely two and a half hour trip of my own.
I also knew that if we didn’t get that king-sized, all-natural latex mattress for which IKEA charges about a third of what any place else we’ve tracked down charges by this weekend we would be sleeping in our old queen for quite some time to come. Not a big deal. Expect that our old queen is the only plan we had for getting Jake out of his crib and into a Big Boy Bed.
The plan, you see, was to pass on to Jack our old, off-gassed queen — perfectly suitable for a thirty-pound boy, a 150-pound teenager, and, somewhere along the way between the two, a parent on the nights when Jake is suffering illness or nightmares or just plain loneliness. The Big Boy Bed, then, is just our own.
Or, more accurately, as it has turned out, our brand new, king-sized, all-natural latex king — a lovely expanse of sleeping space on which I will (theoretically, since I’m not yet sleeping on it) no longer roll downhill toward Mike’s considerably greater impression on mattress springs. Yep, I can almost spot it there in Jake’s room from my jealous perch on our old, creaky, lopsided queen.
It actually makes some sense — our beautiful new mattress sitting cozily in Jake’s room while I continue to fight the pull of gravity every time I turn my belly toward the downward slope that leads to my sleeping husband. See, a co-sleeper requires a bed frame — something to which the co-sleeper may be anchored so as to, you know, keep the baby safe. Meanwhile, we decided that the bed frames being offered by IKEA: a) didn’t look so sturdy, and b) were unlikely to fit in the van Mike borrowed from his brother for the trip down to Charlotte.
So, until we find a suitable frame somewhere locally, Jake gets the cool, comfy mattress and I get to gaze longingly down at his tiny little body asleep in the middle of all that wasted space.
Continue reading ‘Of Big Boy Beds and Co-Sleepers’
