the family bed

i was the last person in the world who thought i wanted to have a family bed. the concept behind the family bed is just that -- the whole family, including the children, sleeps together. intellectually, the whole concept was a little weird for me -- it sounded too child indulgent, too new wave. i mean, we have a bassinet in the room literally six inches away from my side of the bed -- wasn't that going to be enough? apparently, not for miss mia. she only wants to sleep with either of us. truthfully, though, emotionally, i kinda feel more at ease when she is sleeping with one of us. bringing her into our bed, though, turned out to be less emotional or intellectual, more just a matter of exhaustion. mia won't sleep well when put down. she sleeps a grunt-filled 20 minutes and then starts shrieking (did i mention our little angel is a fussy one?), so the only way we've been learning to sleep is... well, together. with us she sleeps up to four blissful hours. of course, i'm always worried about her suffocating or something similar so we bought this kind of in-bed bassinet thing where she basically has a walled off area to herself. we'll see how it works out... meanwhile, here's a shot of our angel actually sleeping (part of the a picture a day photo album for june)