Vol. 49 - Fit for a King

On (bed) size mattering

California. Wyoming. Texas. Alaska.

Beautiful corners of our country, yes. But these are also bed sizes that exist, mattress dimensions for the oversized perhaps. Or, maybe just another example of American excess.

Either way, if you so desire, it’s possible to buy a bed that measures 108-inches across by 108-inches long. That’s nine-feet by nine-feet. That’s 81-square feet. That’s half the size of most of New York City’s studio apartments.

I know this because Emily and I have been loosely researching oversized beds because our oversized son co-sleeps with us and very soon, our very tall toddler daughter will likely join the party. And our regular-ass 76-inches-wide-by-80-inches-long king-sized-bed just won’t cut it.

For those readers who don’t know me, I’m large. A shade under 6’ 4” and a shade over 260-pounds, I take up a lot of cubic footage. Emily is more normal-sized than me but, early returns indicate that both of our children are going to grow to be, like me, oversized human beings. In fact, both have measured in the greater than 99th percentile in height since they were newborns.

(And for those readers who do know me, you’ve likely heard me retell the joke about me telling the doctor that it’s impossible to be in the “greater than 99th percentile.” Unless, that is, you’re talking about the largest child on Earth. Is that what you’re telling me, doc? That my kids are the biggest kids on Earth?)

There are some cornerstone positions when it comes to parenting; things like the clean plate club; nursing until they’re ready to stop versus weaning; what amount of screen time is detrimental; and how early to start toilet training.

Of course, co-sleeping, along with sleep training, is one of the two biggest hardline positions parents often take.

In the VM house, we’re co-sleepers. We’ve always been co-sleepers. We’ve never been under the illusion that we were going to be anything other than co-sleepers. Emily and I love co-sleeping. We love having our little boy in between us, even as he grows well past half his mom’s height (heading quickly toward half his dad’s).

In fact, we love co-sleeping so much that just last night, Emily and I both wore looks of sadness when our son announced he wanted to try sleeping in his own bed.

We were also both overjoyed when he climbed into our bed at 2am this morning.

As co-sleepers we miss out on a lot. We go to sleep with him, which means we go to sleep early, which means we rarely get a chance to have nights together, either on the couch watching a movie, quietly chatting, having a drink or a late-night snack, or, as a recent newsletter illustrated, fucking.

But, in the interest of brutal honesty (the backbone of this newsletter), one of the prime motivators of many of my approaches to parenting is pure selfishness. Co-sleeping isn’t about our son, and someday our daughter, sleeping in bed with us for their own good. It’s about the realization that someday soon (and if last night is any indicator, sooner than I thought), our kids are going to be too big to climb in bed with us, too old to cuddle with mom and dad, too grown to be held and gently lullabied to sleep.

We still have a few more years to enjoy co-sleeping. And hopefully at least some time with all four of us piled into one big bed. Maybe Wyoming-sized. Maybe Texas-sized. Maybe even all 81-square-feet of Alaskan-sized.

But then, in an instant, our kids will outgrow sleeping with their parents. They’ll move in to their own rooms with their own beds and Emily and I will be left with just each other and a whole lot of empty space.