Sleeping alone

At 4:30 this morning we were awakened by Wendall calling out for us. He had had a nightmare, and needed to know that everything was ok. We tried to calm him, and eventually brought him into our bed, where he settled into sleep, touching one or both of us for the remainder of the night.

We have been lucky up to now, not many nightmares have disturbed our rest, but as Wendall's imagination expands this will change. I still suffer from the occasional nightmare (the last was that I was trapped in the home of a militant anti-choice born again Christian. It was awful, and I only wish I was kidding.), but I know that I once had a few a week.

While pulling Wendall's little body close this morning, I thought about the sleeping arrangements in most US and European families. I realized how unfair it is that we spend our childhood alone in a bed, with no warm body nearby to help fight the terrors of the night. It is not until adulthood, when most of the monsters have been laid to rest, that we are able to cuddle up to someone and let their warmth and solid form remind us that we are safe in bed.

I had a friend in high school who had shared a room and a bed with her older sister from the day she was born. Her sister was two years older, and when I met them they shared a queen sized bed, or they had until her sister went out of state for college. My friend had spent the night alone for the first time in her life, and she did not enjoy it at all. By winter, she had started inviting people to sleep-overs every weekend that her sister was away. Almost every weekend she would have a few friends spend the night, maybe in her big comfy bed, maybe on the floor. She always looked happiest on Mondays. By Thursday she looked tired, the result of sleepless nights. She looked forward to college so that she could have a roommate again, and ended up very happy in a triple occupancy room for her freshman year.

So I wonder, what would happen if families shared space more freely at night. I know that there are issues with co-sleeping and "family beds", but I wonder how the children sleep, and how often parents are pulled out of bed in the early hours of the morning.

Not that I need my child in my bed every moment of every night, but it made me kinda happy to be in a big bed with two Wendalls and two kitties this morning.