co-sleeping

Posted on February 23, 2007

Ever since we brought home Mateo, we’ve been getting unsolicited advice from a lot of people to just let Mateo sleep with us in bed during the nights. Mateo has this playpen/crib which my mama brought as a Christmas gift and we were adamant that he sleep there.

I have a variety of reasons for not wanting him to sleep with us. One, I wanted Ramil and me to maintain our ‘couplehood’. It’s enough that Mateo has arrived and made it a threesome. I don’t want us to lose our identity as a couple just because we have a son already. As I’ve told Ramil several times, before we are a mommy and a daddy, we are husband and wife. I don’t want us to be limited to being parents, we are still a couple. Secretly though, I think people are just scared I would get pregnant again. LOL. Nothing to fear in that department though, I wouldn’t want another baby right now.

Another reason for wanting Mateo to have his own sleeping space would be our sleeping habits. Ramil and I both move a lot when we’re sleeping. I don’t want any of us accidentally hitting our son with an arm or a leg.

Since last week though, Mateo has been sleeping on our bed. It was more convenient for us to check on him when he started getting fevers if he’s just lying beside us. We haven’t moved him back to his playpen though even though he hasn’t had any fever since Sunday. We found it easier to wake up in the middle of the night and not have to get up to tend to Mateo. We’re giving him a deadline though, when he gets better sleeping at night, he’s moving back.