Creating a family bed

There's lots of good information out there about the benefits of cosleeping for some families. For us, it was a natural choice because of our circumstances. First, we were having a great deal of trouble breastfeeding, and keeping baby close made frequent feedings easier. Second, I had postpardum anxiety and truly thought something was going to happen to my baby if I wasn't watching him sleep - I checked on him obsessively throughout his night-time napping sessions. Third, we moved in with my parents because I was suffering from postpardum anxiety, and we didn't take our crib with us.

Now, co-sleeping is the best choice for our family (not just something we continue out of circumstances). This works for us particularly because my husband works nights and sleeps days - which means Roman sleeps with me all night and naps with his daddy during the day. We still use the nursery and the crib and the organic crib mattress (specifically chosen because it wasn't sprayed with flame retardant chemicals). Roman plays with his stuffed animals and his bumble bee mobile in his crib. Sometimes, we will do a diaper change or clothing change in the crib, if Roman is particularly wiggly and may not be secure on the changing table. The crib can also be used if in the future cosleeping is no longer working well for us.

This is how we made our family bed:
We started by removing the headboard, footboard, and frame from our queen-sized mattress and boxspring. Next, we borrowed an extra-long twin-sized mattress and boxspring from my parents. We placed the two sets of mattresses side by side, and they are exactly the same length. The twin mattress was not the same height as the queen, so my husband built a simple H-shaped platform for the twin mattress/boxspring out of 4X4 scrap wood. Once matching fitted sheets were placed on both sets of mattresses, it created the look of one large continuous bed. Warning - since our home and rooms are extremely tiny, the family bed takes up the entire sleeping room. There is only enough space between the mattress and the wall for a tiny bedside table (it's actually a wicker patio table that I bought at a consignment store). This is really not the best setup for our room from a decorative standpoint, but it still looks pretty great to me.

Creating a family bed has created a shift in how we view our home. We no longer see our house as "my room" and "your room". The boundaries have been taken down in that sense. There is now more of a "sleeping room" and a "nursery/playroom". This is important because I thought that we could never have more than one child as long as we were living in a two-bedroom home -- the parents and each child have to have their own space, right? Not so! For now, sharing our spaces works for us.