I'm not a hippie mom, I'm a lazy mom who wants to sleep.

When I look through my pictures on my phone, I have an awful lot of adorable sleeping pictures of my baby. And an awful lot of those are of the baby sleeping in the bed. If it looks like he sleeps in my bed a lot, it's because he does. I guess you can call me a co-sleeper.

Before having a baby, when I heard the term "co-sleep" and "the family bed," I immediately thought that sounded like hippie parenting. And since sometimes I'm not even a fan of having to share a bed with my husband (I want my space!), I said I would not participate in this co-sleeping business.

I posted the link to this post I wrote on facebook. And I got some great feedback that has stuck with me and was a turning point in the way I view my baby sleeping. One of my friend's said, "I'm probably going to regret it later at some point, but I've just been letting my little one co-sleep so that I can get more sleep." And I admitted to her that I'm guilty of that too, as if I should be ashamed that I went back on my word to never co-sleep. But then my other friend said something about co-sleeping that still makes my hormonal self tear up:

"I have never regretted it! All 4 slept with us. And now, as the oldest prepares to leave for college, I would give anything to have those days back"

Since then, I have let go of the guilt I feel when we let the baby come sleep in the bed at 1am. I would feel guilty because the last thing we wanted to do was rock him to sleep for who knows how long, when I could just bring him in the bed and he would almost immediately fall back asleep, just from holding his hand (love that sweet little boy!). And since I let it go, I no longer dread the night time, wondering what the crap shoot would deal me as far as a night's rest went, because sometimes he sleeps great, and sometimes he doesn't, and not knowing would cause me mild anxiety. Sounds silly, but I'm a girl who loves sleep.

The baby starts every night in his crib. Sometimes he stays there and sometimes he doesn't. And right now, it's working for us. It doesn't bother Victor, because he's naturally a big sweet ball of mush who says "I like having my family all in the same room with me," although maybe he's changing his mind now that the baby likes to sleep right up against him while he is already on the edge of the bed ha ha.

And while we are on the subject, I have realized that some of my biggest reasons of why I love breastfeeding so much are because they work great with my lazy parenting techniques. I don't have to do any prep, any cleaning and can do it anytime or anywhere. I also lost the majority of my baby weight just from breastfeeding---no exercise required! Yesterday after baby woke up at 6am ugh, we took the nicest nap together after I fed him in bed while lying on my side. It sounds so hippie, but when you think about it it's because I'm lazy and didn't want to get up and wanted to get more sleep.

Hippie parenting/lazy parenting. Whatever you want to call it, I'm getting sleep and sure am enjoying the extra baby snuggles. Win win.