Rooming-In

First, some background information:

This is what a "boppy" looks like:



Basically, it's a U-shaped pillow that can be used for everything from playtime to propping the kid up during nursing.

Every night after feeding him, I lay the sleeping Dragonmonkey down in the middle of his boppy--- right beside the tag that says something like"NO SLEEP! DO NOT ALLOW BABY TO SLEEP ON THE BOPPY" in huge red letters. I'm not sure how it reads... I haven't exactly paid attention. What a wonderful mother I am.

So there he sleeps, crammed up against the furthest side of our bed, his boppy smushed up against the wall so that I have maximum leg space on the bed. Did I mention what a great mom I am?

Rooming-in with your baby is a highly controversial topic. For those of you out there who have no idea what "rooming-in" means, it's exactly what it sounds like: keeping the baby in the room with you at night.

Proponents claim that it's easier to breastfeed at night, and that it promotes bonding.

Opponents contend that both parents and baby sleep less, and that it's detrimental to a marriage. There's also a chance that you could roll over in your sleep and squish your kid. Seriously. It's happened.

Frankly, I could give a flying fig about what proponents and opponents argue about. The Dragonmonkey not only sleeps in the room with The Bean and I, he sleeps on the bed with us.

This is not because I am trying to bond with the Dragonmonkey. No, I'm not nearly so maternal. I do it because I am WAY too lazy to haul my flubbery heiny all the way to another room every time the Dragonmonkey begins his nightly wailing. Unfortunately, as our bedroom is pathetically tiny, the only place for him to sleep is on the bed.

Okay, you guys need to know one last piece of information before I can finish up my story. I recently dyed my hair red in an attempt to look more like this:





Heck, I would have even settled for this:




Unfortunately, while the dye job did turn out okay, it left me feeling a little more like this:




Still, I wasn't complaining. Even looking like a Peggy Bundy was a step-up from what I have been feeling like lately. Anyhow, now that you know all the pertinent details, let me explain what happened to me this morning. This morning, I was feeling... errr... well, romantic. As in, I felt like, uhhh... you know. Cuddling with my husband. Maybe it was the new hair-do, maybe it was simple deprivation... who knows? All I know is that I was feeling, for lack of a better term, frisky.

So I decided to do something about it.

I wiped under my eyes to make sure there wasn't any left-over mascara that had travelled south sometime during the night, took a sip of water to chase away morning breath, and ran a hand through my newly-reddened hair.

There. Everything was ready. Propping myself up on an elbow, I rolled over and reached a hand out towards The Bean...

and saw THIS staring at me from the boppy at the foot of the bed:





#@%!!&!



Now I know the real reason against rooming-in.