At almost two years old, Aiman is still co-sleeping with us — something that just might kill me. I don't mind that he's in the bed with us, in fact, I love that he's a few inches away for midnight cuddling purposes and whatnot, but what does make co-sleeping unbearable at this point is his dictatorship — over me, specifically.

We sleep in completely mismatched positions and places all over the bed, and with two adults and a rather massive toddler, this arrangement is asking for sore mornings. And sore, groggy morning are indeed served. Now this can only be explained via illustrations and accompanying descriptions.

Let's begin.





That is how we initially arranged ourselves, which is pretty standard and protective of child-off-of-bed incidents. Then because our mattress was getting a little too flat and less supportive in said arrnagement, we figured that we might be able to sleep a little better if we all arranged ourselves like this:

Sleeping like this wasn't so bad until about two night in, after which I could not take it anymore- explained and illustrated like so:

So I learned that I can not sleep between two people because it gets too damn hot even with the fan on or windows fully open. Personally, lying down and overheating makes me want to vomit, literally. Or technically makes my stomach want to because I am terrified of vomiting. It's sort of weird because I can talk about vomit all day, but when it comes to literally throwing up, I beg for any other terrible loss of bodily control. Oh yes, so back to this layout. Ah, notice the worried look on thy face and clutching hands over thy belly -classic look of dinner making a comeback, if you get what I mean.

After the second night, I went back to my old spot and let the boys stay where they were.

I was happy with this mismatched and awkward positioning, albeit occasionally being tangled in someone's huge feet (SAAD). Well let me tell you that sleeping like this lasted about 30 minutes because of this scenario:

Maybe there was too much space between us all or maybe Aiman is really used to having someone being a breath away, but he wasn't going to tolerate this. It sent panic throughout his system and he shot up and called for me in increasing decibels, which eventually led to this:

Now I was and still am totally fine -of course- with sleeping snuggled nice and tightly with my baby-boo, but I guess the panic of the open space riled him up a little too much because it went from comfy snuggles to toddler-death-grip.

Meanwhile, Saad is completely unaware of any of this going on because I can hardly breath much less call for help. When Aiman was asleep enough I would try to slip my numb arm(s) away or gently place him next to Saad, kid would suddenly be like –you know how a cat gets all super clingy and impossible to de-cling when you try to put it in water?–he would get like that.

So I gave in and looked like this after a few nights:

Exhausted, grumpy, under-eye bags.

Saad? Sleeping like a baby.

Baby? Definitely sleeping like a baby.

Me? A little closer to this:

Obviously he's nowhere near ready for his own bed, and now I sort of fear what it'll be like to actually try to make that transition. For the last two nights, he's been letting me exchange my numb arm for the non-numb one and even change positions every once in a while.

Hurray for progress!