Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to bed we go

OMG you guys. I have the best news.

I have a new futon.

As some of you might know (but most of you do not, because it's an embarrassing detail of my life which I tend not to fucking broadcast), I have been sleeping on my couch for the better part of the last two months. Yeah. Curled up like a garden grub on three skinny cushions for the duration of the long, cold, night. After night. After night. It sucked a whole heck of a lot of ass.

But those days are over, y'all.

Because Mama got herself a special delivery from the Ikea Man.

I mean, of course I had a bed. Once upon a time. But it was, you know, my marital bed. After Shawn and I broke up I slept in it with Lil for a while, but I started hating that bed. I hated the way it creaked and sagged in the middle and it was just generally time for that bed to hit the trash heap. And be set on fire like the piece of shit it was.

Plus, I was starting to get the feeling that at some point, mama and daughter should probably start sleeping apart. Especially if I was ever gonna find her a brand new step-daddy.

Of course, being a touchy-feely earth mama, I have always been a strong advocate of everything Dr. Sears. I was way into baby-wearing, exclusive breastfeeding, organic, homemade baby food frozen in ice cube trays, non-violent communication, and of course, co-sleeping.

I saw no reason my baby should should ever be in a crib (Fucking baby jails!!! Cry it out, my ass! Barbaric!!!!)--I'd say, Why put her in that receptacle when she can sleep right here beside me? I mean, adults don't particularly care for sleeping alone, so why do we make our wee ones do it? Huh? Huh?
Riddle Me that, Dr. Spock, you fucking nazi!

So. I was able to justify my beliefs about co-sleeping for a long time. Years. I nursed Lily well beyond what is considered to be the "normal" time frame, and made no apologies for it. I railed against the sterilized way that American culture forces helpless babies to conveniently 'individuate' from their parents with things like baby swings and exersaucers and bouncy seats (I'd loudly proclaim them "Neglect-o-matics" while strutting around carrying my 20 lb toddler in a sling she had clearly outgrown). When Barbara Walters and Elizabitch Hasselback made wildly ignorant comments about how gross nursing in public was, who was right there on 7th Avenue in front of the ABC building with her shirt hiked up, along with all the other New York hippie moms, proudly feeding her baby by her very own breasts for an old-school Public Nurse-In?
(yep. This girl).

It wasn't until the demise of my marriage that I actually started to question my methods. I don't regret a second of Lily's upbringing to date, and I am still a strong advocate for the attachment style of parenting, but I did start to wonder if, now that we were a one-parent household, was I starting to encourage Lily to have a bond with me that was, perhaps, a little too attached?
Was there such a thing? I'm still not sure. But the last thing I would want to do is keep Lil from becoming healthy and independent. And I think it's probably a lot easier to fuck your kid up when there isn't a two-parent, good-cop, bad-cop dynamic all the time to keep things balanced.

So, the first step toward trying to give Lily a little sense of her individual self was to give her her own big-girl bed. And move me into the fucking living room. Yay for Mom.

I took my lumps. I did my time on the couch. But now I have my own big-girl bed. A lovely pull-out futon that's all mine. Mine, I say!!!

It's so cushy and warm and comfortable that I barely even got out of it this weekend. For real, y'all. I love it that much.

Life is pretty darned good.