Victims of the wild bedhog...

[lalemma]

We (two adults and a 14-month-old) sleep in a king-size mattress on the floor. Family bed has been and continues to be great for us, and we're not really interested in making a change.

But... recently our little guy has been a serious bedhog. When he's alone in there for naps, or early in the evening, he's fine. But after we come to bed, he seems to strongly prefer spreading out widthwise in the bed. And he is pretty aggressive about achieving his goal of total bed domination. This morning I woke up with my face smooshed into the wall, and my husband actually had a bruised arm from being kicked out of the way so the little emperor could have more space. (All of the space! There is never enough!)

It's pretty funny, but also kind of a drag. Bedtime actually feels slightly dangerous now, between getting kicked, shoved, pinched, etc., or being woken up by a baby pinwheeling in the middle of the bed...

Any ideas? He normally sleeps between us - would it help to put him between me and the wall? Any BTDT/it gets better support?

[elisheva]

I *love* our family bed and all the iterations it has gone through. You could try putting him next to the wall, but he might just want his own space (like a mattress next to yours or at the foot of yours??). I remember going to sleep in our family bed as a kid and getting up in the middle of the night to go to my own room to have my own space. Not dissing on your sleeping arrangements at all - just looking at alternatives. We play musical beds at our house (people are dumbfounded when I talk about it - which I try not to but sometimes it slips out that DH sleeps with ds1 in the nursery and I sleep in the Big Bed with the two littles and everyone is perfectly happy with that as it allows us to get the max sleep...you can see the wheels turning when they realize I'm pregnant...there ARE other rooms in the house, people;).

[ThinkGlobalMama]

I'm with you! Our 18 month old DS has also taken that Bedhog Course 101! When he starts to flop and roll around and wakes me up, I usually try to gently put him in his crib (right next to us). It's about 50/50 that he will stay asleep the rest of the night or wake up again and want to come back to our bed. As for falling asleep on his own, forget about it! He still nurses to sleep and nurses back to sleep when he wakes up. I know that lots of parents are enjoying full nights of sleep by this point, but I have just resigned myself to our little routine as I think he is just a little more emotionally needy right now. I'm not ready to put him through some sort of "sleep training" or anything like that, so I just complain about it to those who understand and care. ...and then put up with it again the next night. LOL.