Word of the Day

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: I miss co-sleeping.

I never assumed we'd do the "family bed" thing. I always thought we'd have our baby sleep in our room for awhile, even a long while, definitely -- but probably in her own space. We even bought a bedside co-sleeper/bassinette-thingie. But you know what? Suzannah hated it. We all learned very quickly that we all actually slept when I brought Suzannah into the bed with us, and when we mastered nursing in bed, well, that was just bliss . Seriously. That's all I cared about, because in those early days, I was completely convinced I would never sleep for more than three hours at a time EVER AGAIN, and I pretty much would have sold my car, my house, a kidney, and possibly future children if I could have just had a little more shut-eye. What can I say -- sleep deprivation does crazy things to your brain.

But it was more than the fact that we all seemed to get more sleep that way. I simply loved seeing my daughter's perfect, milk-drunk face as she drifted off to sleep snuggled in my arms. I loved holding her and smelling her and feeling her nearness. I loved hearing her sleepy sighs, loved the way she would touch my face or the way we'd just look at each other and bask in the newness of our life together. It felt absolutely right, and for some reason, I just never worried about all the warnings I heard from well-meaning advice-givers -- you know, that we'd NEVER get her to sleep alone, that she'd grow up clingy, yada yada yada. It's the same thing we always heard about breastfeeding -- that she'd NEVER stop unless we MADE her. For the record, when Suzannah was ready to transition to her own room, she made it perfectly clear. And when she was done breastfeeding, she made that clear, too.

I miss both of those things, even though I realize that my little girl is just growing up, that it's the right and natural order of things.

But sometimes when I kiss her goodnight, I want to linger with her a little while, want to stroke her hair and hug her and kiss her until she's like, OKAY, MOM, YOU CAN GO NOW. She'll literally drop to her mattress, pull her blanket around her body, and say "Nigh-nigh." She can be pretty firm about this, actually.

But before she does this, I have to hug her a million times, and lately, after I say "I love you" I grab her, squeeze her in one final hug, and say, "Squeeze!" Hey, a vocabulary lesson never hurt anyone, right?

She picked right up on this, as she's adding more and more words to her vocabulary each day. So now, she'll hug me back and say, "Fweeze!"

This evening, we were clowning around after her bedtime story (yes, when we should have been winding down and doing something more peaceful. I don't know, baby meditation or massage or guided imagery or lullabies or something) and she grabbed her own feet, squeezed them, and said, "Fweeze!"

While I was changing her, she asked for a wipe. She gripped it tightly in her hands until it started dripping moisture onto the floor. She grinned. "Fweeze!" she cried.

And every time she does that, I just have to scoop her up in my arms, give her a crushing hug, and say, "Squeeze!" And of course, what it really means is this: I love you so much I can hardly even breathe.