Giving a big yawn, my 10-year-old daughter Freya stood up and looked over at me.
‘I’m ready for bed, mom,’ she told me. ‘Are you coming up?’
Nodding, I closed my book and followed her upstairs, into my bedroom. We both got into my super king sized bed and, snuggling in, were both fast asleep within minutes.
You see, even though she’s 10-years-old, I’m still co-sleeping with my daughter. Just the way that Kourtney Kardashian has revealed she does with her 10-year-old little girl, Penelope.
But this wasn’t the way I imagined my life would be when I first had children.
When I fell pregnant with my eldest child, Harrison, now 15, I’d thought we’d start off with him in our bedroom, in his Moses basket. Then, I assumed we’d move him into a cot, in his own bedroom, where he’d sleep.
I quickly realised how naïve I’d been.
Because while I’d thought that babies would start off waking up through the night, wanting milk and needing their nappies changed, before it gradually got better as they got older, it wasn’t like that at all.
It just didn’t get better. And, as the months became years, my husband and I were still woken numerous times through the night by Harrison’s tears.
We persevered, keeping him in his cot, and only going in to reassure him that we were here when he woke distressed up during the night.
However, it wasn’t until he started school at five-years-old, that he started making it through the whole night.
Meanwhile, we’d had Freya. She never slept from the word go. She had silent reflux, which is where the stomach acid rises up through your oesophagus and sometimes even as far as your nasal passages, which was terrifying.
More than once, she stopped breathing and turned blue. So already, I was on high alert as we attached an alarm to her mattress, that would alert us if she stopped breathing.
But even when she got over that, she still didn’t sleep through. She’d wake several times every night, stretching her arms out to be picked up and cuddled. We tried letting her cry it out but that didn’t sit comfortably with me, it was too distressing for us both.
So, we tried sitting with her, rubbing her back, whispering softly to her through our yawns. But nothing helped. Even if we got her back to sleep, she’d wake again a few hours later.
But all she wanted was to be in bed with us. And when she upgraded to a bed, at the age of three, rather than crying, she’d just appear at the side of our bed.
Worn out after years of broken sleep, we gave in and let her come in with us.
We had to prioritise getting sleep whichever way we could, and, as we lived in a semi-detached house with thin walls, I was painfully aware that she may be keeping the neighbours awake as well as us.
At three years old, she was diagnosed with autism, and that meant we had to pick our battles with even more care. Sleep just wasn’t one we had the energy for.
I counted down until she started school, praying it would work the same magic that it had with Harrison. She had been sleeping in the same bed as us for two years by this point.
Sadly, however, school didn’t change things. Freya was just so full of energy but no matter how late she stayed up, she’d always wake up in the middle of the night and wriggle her way into our bed.
In the end, when she was six years old, my husband and I came up with a solution. We bought a super king size bed.
By that point, we were all so used to it and I was so exhausted, I’d barely feel her come in.
Eventually though, my husband ended up sleeping on the sofa – even in a bed our size, as she grew, there just wasn’t enough room for all three of us.
Recently, my husband and I broke up. I’m not sure if it was because of the sleeping situation, it was most likely a combination of things. But 15 years of continual broken sleep definitely didn’t help.
Since then, it’s just been me, Freya and Harrison and now, I don’t even put Freya into her own bed. When she’s finally tired, she’ll ask if I want to go up with her and usually, I’m so tired because she generally wakes up at 5am, I say yes.
In a way, I think it’s made us closer. We’ll cuddle in at night and in the morning, we’ll talk and sing songs together.
When I saw that Alicia Silverstone had been subject to negative comments for co-sleeping with her 11-year-old but was admitting it anyway, I thought, ‘Good for her.’ Nobody knows other people’s situations.
I’m lucky that my family and friends haven’t judged me for it, and neither should they.
They understand how hard life can be for us – Harrison was recently diagnosed with autism too, and was becoming extremely anxious going to school, so now I home-educate him – so they’ve never said anything negative about our sleeping arrangements.
I mentioned it to a friend recently and she just gave me a look – then admitted she does the same thing.
I think it’s far more common than anyone realises. I can’t imagine that many families go to bed at night and wake up in the same place the next morning.
At the end of the day, everyone knows what works for their family and what doesn’t. I’m the only one who is now there with her when she’s distraught during the night and therefore it is my – and her – decision as to how we handle the situation.
I’m sure it won’t be forever and until then, I’ll enjoy the extra time I have with my little girl.
As told to Sarah Whiteley
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