Julie Jay: Children's invasion of our bed has me missing the fabled pillow talk

After what feels like years of musical beds, I feel it is time to insist on mammy and daddy sharing a mattress

One friend told me her husband likes to stay up watching television in the sitting room well into the night, and her kids now take his spot in their marital bed nightly because 'Daddy had his chance'. Graphic: iStock 

My husband and I have been sleeping in separate beds for a long time. Not due to any marital woes as such — although his insistence on subjecting us all to Radiohead and Counting Crows on repeat would test anyone’s energy reserves.

It is mostly driven by necessity, because both of our children are going through a phase where they insist on sleeping with at least one parent. I say it’s a phase because I wish to manifest a future where I can starfish in a bed without hitting one or two little people.

Despite family members sharing a bed being depicted as a cosy, familial thing in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I don’t think it’s a blueprint for life, given it also depicts a 12-year-old running a company. As much as I believe in giving young people responsibility, Willy Wonka’s flagrant disregard for child labour needs to be investigated.

I can’t tell you when our co-sleeping started, or which child first turned up his tiny nose at his own bed, but all of a sudden, I was lucky to be getting 50% of the pillow, despite the youngest trespasser barely reaching my thigh.

I remember when travelling in Vietnam coming across the underground tunnel system, which the Viet Cong had used in their war against the US, and marvelling at how human beings could have defied physics and squeezed in. 

I now understand how deceptive physics can be, because my two-year-old somehow manages to take up an entire king-size bed, relegating his mother to so little space that I am starting to look at the cat’s bed with envy.

When the two children clamber in, either my husband or I will invariably have to vacate — because despite owning the bed, these tiny interlopers are all about squatter’s rights. But whichever of us cracks first and goes to sleep in the spare room, much like Liam Neeson in Taken, the kids will always find us.

For the last two weeks, I have awoken to the five-year-old beside me, and, upon tiptoeing down to the toddler and his dad in the spare room, found both sleeping soundly — which is adorable, mostly because they are both clutching their blankie.

Still, what worries me is this tag-teaming with the beds is not just exhausting; it also has me missing my husband a little. I miss the pillow talk — and by pillow talk, I of course mean talking through my latest social faux pas and asking for reassurance people didn’t think it was weird when, responding to an innocuous “how are you?”, I couldn’t decide whether to say “I’m good” or “I’m okay” and instead told this stranger “I’m gay”.

Having discussed it with my friends, it seems our musical beds situation is not unique. One friend told me her husband likes to stay up watching television in the sitting room well into the night, and her kids now take his spot in their marital bed nightly because “Daddy had his chance”.

Another pal told me she had awoken one night, with three kids draped around her, and found her husband nowhere to be seen. Eventually she located him, asleep on a rug in front of the fire like a Dickensian orphan.

“I was so jealous,” she said. “Because at least he had the rug to himself.”

She went on to say he had wrapped himself in a dog blanket, which makes me convinced this man will be starting a GoFundMe for an actual bed any day now.

Other friends tell me they haven’t slept in the same bed as their husband since Obama was US president, while divorced and separated friends have all announced getting the bed to themselves as one of the perks of splitting up. 

Until, of course, they meet their next partner, and then the fun of the “should we sleep together or should we not sleep together” starts again.

Only one friend is dead against separate beds, seeing it as the kiss of death for any relationship, but it’s hard to hear her explain her point of view over the rest of my friends laughing and insisting nobody in their right mind and with access to a camp bed would sleep with their partner unless absolutely necessary.

As an English teacher, I thought I understood sleep deprivation because I had read Macbeth, and let’s just say Lady Macbeth isn’t exactly an advertisement for insomnia. 

And yes, the constant moving between beds is tiring, especially when punctuated by multiple requests for bottles and blankies from the increasingly verbal two-year-old, but it is the distance between my husband and me I’m most worried about.

As a result, I have told my husband that over the next few weeks we need to lay down the law and insist to the kids that mammy and daddy are sleeping together, for better or worse — just like we promised that priest in front of family and friends and before the Prosecco reception all those years ago.

If for no other reason, I just can’t be bothered getting up to turn off the light anymore. Marriage is hard, there’s no question, but surely the biggest plus is you have someone who is contractually obligated to turn off the big light while you can lie in bed, ruminating on telling a stranger you’re gay.