Avert your eyes

WARNING! Do not read this post if:

1. You are my parent (this means you, Dad) or Nate's parent. Trust me, you don't need this information and I prefer not talking of such matters with you.

2. You know me personally and are just fine with our lack of conversational intimacy. You don't tell me about your sex life, I reciprocate. It's all good.

3. You work with me or (Bernie) for me and we do not enjoy conversational intimacy (see above).

4. You regularly visit my home and sit on my furniture, confident in the fact that a couch is used only for sitting, watching TV and maybe eating ice cream late at night.

I'm not kidding. This isn't that exciting a post, and I think we will all be much happier if you click away now, browse elsewhere, look at pictures of my kid and do not read on. I do not want to talk to you about this, and I truly prefer our relationship on the exact level on which it exists now. Why am I posting to strangers? 'Cuz I gotta get it off my chest, and it's easy to tell the Internet things I don't necessarily want to share with you. If I have now made it so alluring that you cannot possible avoid reading what follows, do not ever try to engage me on this topic. Let's pretend you didn't read this. Let's just not talk about it.

OK, now. For the rest of you.

We are officially co-sleepers. I have resisted using this title in the past because it comes from the great parenting machine and sounds a little like what Ferris Bueller would call an -ism. Co-sleeping is not my belief structure. I don't feel strongly that all children belong in their parents' beds, and I'm not sure I believe there are tons of benefits for Clementine. For a long time I preferred the term "she sleeps with us" to "co-sleeping" because it more accurately reflected what we were doing. She sleeps with us because we were at first too fearful and fatigued to trek down the hall to her nursery to feed her or assure ourselves she was still breathing. But then I started back to work, and nestling in beside her every night after enjoying not enough time with her seemed like a good compromise. It's easy to feed her when she wakes, and it's nice to have her snuggled up between us. Three months passed (my first cut-off), then six, and then I realized we were happy and just going to stick with this until we didn't. Also, Clementine now treats her crib like a jungle gym by pulling herself up to standing within the first 30 seconds of being placed in it and then cracking her head on the bars as she inevitably tumbles after a minute or two. I'm afraid to leave her in it alone, but really that's just a convenient excuse to use when people frown upon the whole she-sleeps-with-us concept. We are now so totally officially co-sleepers that I bought bed rails to keep her from falling out at night (and from crawling out if she wakes before we turn in for the night). Yup, and we've rearranged a little so she can sleep on the outside of us with her own space. It's working out lovely, and I think we're all the better for it. No more angst.

But that leaves us with one big problem. If the baby is in the bed, where do we...you know...where in the world can we have sex? Don't even suggest that we try it right there with her snoozing alongside us. That's a little too Summer of Love for our style, and she's a light sleeper. Sure, she likes to be rocked to sleep, but, well, yuck. She may not remember when she gets older, but we always will. I'm not trying to be puritanical, but I'm so not down with that. Since we have no guest bed, the only other bed-like surfaces are the crib (too small), the dining room table (too weak, and what do you think this is, a movie?) and the couch. Oh, the couch. Our romantic little getaway lit by the romantic blue light of the TV. It's pure nostalgia: reminds me of college and trying to do it in a twin bed. Add a few beers beforehand, and it's like our first few months of dating. But I'm tired of the couch. It's uncomfortable after a while, I'm convinced someone will find the condoms we stash under the cushions and if anyone were to ever drop by unexpected via the front door, who knows what they would see? I don't want to be putting on a show for the neighbors, and I've been too in denial to make curtains.

Sure, there are alternatives to the couch. There are comfy and not-so-comfy chairs (the back of my office chair is now bent beyond repair from a late-night tryst), but we're getting a little tired of the whole 9 1/2 Weeks vibe of sex on all our furniture. Shocking, I know, but there comes a time when crazy locations, spontaneity and feeling like you might get caught just aren't that exciting if they haven't been tempered with something a little more traditional, a little slower, more comfortable and romantic.

So what are co-sleeping parents to do? Set up the inflatable mattress in the living room? Create a love nest in the cold, cold garage? We joke that maybe a slow down isn't a bad thing for us, since our inability to use birth control brought us our little Clementine love. Shall we hearken back to high school and the abstinence talk? Perish the thought. But let me tell you, it sounds a heck of a lot better than the tile kitchen floor.