Sometimes I sleep sideways

Reflecting on the ways our lives change when we accommodate our children, and how breastfeeding might have laid the foundations for our move to Mallorca.

I haven’t had a good, uninterrupted night’s sleep since the beginning of 2020. This is due to the frankly bonkers fact that I’ve been pregnant or breastfeeding for over four and a half years.

My son turned two over the weekend, and he has slept in my bed, on me or next to me, since the day he was born. He still breastfeeds, so when he wakes up in the middle of the night he nurses back to sleep. Some nights more, some nights less. But from midnight onwards, he won’t settle unless I’m there.

Even though he’s just turned two, he’s the size of an average three year old. He takes up a lot of space. And he sleeps like most toddlers do - all around the bed. Through the course of the night he will travel from one side of our king size bed to the other, from top to bottom, left to right, head up to head down.

Our dear boy is also sick right now, and sleeping especially poorly. He has spent most of the past few nights latched to my nipples or lying on me like I’m a lounge chair. Two nights ago he sat bolt upright in bed and just as suddenly threw himself back, slamming his head directly into my cheekbone. It was like being punched in the face by a boxer, and it hurt like hell. My cheek is still swollen and tender to the touch, and I’m really lucky that it didn’t bruise.

An hour later he did it again. This time his head ricocheted from my shoulder into my lip. Despite my cry of pain, he was straight back to sleep with his head nuzzled in my neck. With my face throbbing, it took me a little longer.

I swear, sleeping with a toddler is a contact sport.

So last night when and saw him sleeping soundly, lying across the bed next to the pillows, did I move him to a better position? Hell, no.

To see your child deeply asleep, safe and sound in bed is a blessing.

Instead I did what any mother with a shred of self preservation would do, and gently manoeuvred a pillow to the edge of the bed and slept sideways next to him.

Some might say, “And this is when I realised that it’s time for our son to move to his own bed” but it’s not. Despite appearances, I get more sleep if he’s in bed with me than if I were getting up to settle him in another room two or three times a night.

And the truth is that most mothers who prioritise breastfeeding end up co-sleeping some if not all of the time, because it’s the easiest and most efficient way for it to work.

Where’s my husband in all this? He ceded the midnight wrestling matches to our son a good six months ago, and now sleeps almost exclusively in our daughter’s room. She also wakes up most nights and needs help getting back to sleep, so we figure he’d be in there anyway. I’ve suggested moving another bed into our bedroom and making it one big family bedroom, but for him that’s a step too far.

I’d have been upset if you told me a few years ago that our sleep would be separated this way, but it’s the phase we’re in. Let’s see how and where we go from here.

Because it’s no small thing, breastfeeding and then, by extension, sleep. It is one of the many ways, big and small, that one seemingly simple parenting decision has macro, knock on affects.

We might decide on baby led weaning and it changes our views on nutrition and what and when we eat. We realise our kid’s most solid stretch of sleep lasts from 8pm till midnight, so we change bedtimes and start going to sleep with our kids. We might change neighbourhoods to access a playground and it fundamentally alters our commute and daily routines. We might select a school which changes our entire social circle and activity calendar. We might even move continents to be closer to family. Almost all parents compromise, sacrifice, or change their lifestyle in order to meet the needs of their children in some way. And that’s ok. In fact, it is a good thing.

The needs of a young child are dramatically different from the needs of a career-driven and fast-lane living couple. Some might say diametrically opposed. The sooner we acknowledge and reckon with this fact, releasing the coulds, woulds, and shoulds of a pre-child life and make friends with life where we are, the happier we’ll be.

For my husband and I, that looks like prioritising flexible hours and self-employment so that we can accommodate our erratic sleep ‘schedules’, and spend more time with our children. We’ve moved to Mallorca in order to facilitate a lifestyle that fits our needs and vision for our family. As we meet other parents from London, Paris, Berlin through our daughter’s school, their reasons for moving to Mallorca are similar - seeking a slower pace of life in a safe country, good schools, wanting a closer relationship to nature, freedom and access to explore the outdoors.

We joke with them about how we went from city people spending nights at fancy restaurants and cocktail bars, and brunching our way through the weekends, to early nights in, farmers markets in the mornings and playgrounds in the afternoon. Our previous selves might have taken one of the many the Digital Nomad Visa options available and run to Bangkok, Cape Town, or Rome, but having children can reveal priorities, values, even instincts that we forgot or didn’t know we had, and they’ve led us to building a life in Mallorca instead.

So sometimes I sleep sideways, and I am so grateful that I do, because I’m learning that the only sane way for us to parent and live a life we’re proud of is to listen to our hearts and do the next right thing again and again. It isn’t always easy to trust our instincts and tune out what our friends, family, bosses, or society are telling us to want or to do. Sometimes it is really hard. Sometimes it can feel like a punch in the face. But in a funny way, the breast feeding to co-sleeping, to I’m so tired I couldn’t possibly work a 9-5 job, were decisions that completely shifted our way of life and perspective on the world, and led us to a beautiful place we would have never considered otherwise.

What a gift.

So consider this your reminder to pause, check in with yourself - one hand on your heart, one hand on your belly - and ask your heart what it wants. Then do the next right thing. It might not lead you to Mallorca, but I bet it will bring you ever closer to what happiness looks like for you.