Sandra Dodd, and others
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When I was 15, I woke up in the middle of the night with an excruciating pain in my tummy. It was *agony*... and I lay in bed, in excruciating pain, crying softly so I wouldn't be heard, for close to two hours, waiting for my mom to wake up so I could tell her. I finally got brave and went *into her room* which we had been trained NEVER to do, and woke her up, which we had been trained NEVER to do, to tell her my stomach felt like there were knives going into it.That reminded me of a night when I was about that age: Once when I was fourteen or fifteen I had a REALLY terrible nightmare. My room was dark. Windowless. It was a half-basement canning room with one un-plastered adobe wall with selves on it, a concrete floor, and the stairs up to the kitchen were really just two big stairs. But it was so dark at night that I couldn't see any more with my eyes open than with them closed. And usually I really liked it. But this night, no.Dola responded in quite a different vein, and that's also now on the co-sleeping page, here: Reading the mails on this thread about the memories of not being comforted at night, fills my heart with sadness. I like to simply add here that, if some of you on this list are making a change in not allowing this to happen to your kids, it is great. In India the children are used to sleeping in the same bed or room with parents or grand moms. I specially love the warmth of my children's bodies next to mine and their smell. The most enjoyable is the time we spent giggling, sharing our feelings, and planning what we are going to do next morning. And all this is done at sleep time in bed. As for me, I still have fond memories of snuggling up to my grand mom (my mother's mom). She was this huge and fat lady, with lots of soft flesh and it felt like sleeping on the softest bed in the world. Since she spent most her time in the kitchen, she smelt of rich Indian spices. Her clothes where soft and white cotton (all widows wore this fabric during her time). I smile every time I remember that. And I hope my children also grow up with similar fond memories of bed time and night time. DolaIn response to Even when we camped, the kids were separate from the adults, "Almadoing" wrote: This reminds me of how we got back to co sleeping when we discovered unschooling (when my sons were about 5 and 3). We were living in a house that was on the market, at the dramatic start of the housing slump, and so I didn't dare implement co-sleeping straightaway (needing to present a master and second bedroom to potential buyers). But near to moving time I asked the kids if, when we got to the new house, they wanted us to all sleep in together "as if we were camping". They LOVED the idea and we still sleep that way 2 1/2 years on. ![]() ![]() |