In the four years Chris and I have been married we have spent maybe half of that sleeping in the same bed, and that’s a generous guess. It wasn’t so bad when we were newlyweds. We’d snuggle, then I’d flop face down onto my pillow on my half of the bed. In some ways, we are very compatible bed sharers. The first night we were together we hopped in the sack, cried out in uncomfortable dismay, and both began to yank the glued down hospital corners out of the end of the bed. We then laughed, looked at each other and thought, “We are SO right for each other.” I soon discovered that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

Chris talks in his sleep. Now, the average person mumbles a bit and goes back to snoring; Chris carries on full length conversations with imaginary persons and sounds perfectly lucid. I could fill a book with the absurd comments he has made while sleeping. My favorite was the time he rolled over toward me at two a.m. and asked, “Have you seen the movie In Like Flint?” I thought he was awake, so I answered. We had a full conversation about how I should see this movie before he started talking to an imaginary third person in our bed and asking his opinion on things! Other times he would start thrashing around shouting, “No! NO!” I would always wake him up from this because it freaked me out. Once he told me an entire horrific nightmare he was having. He fell back asleep and started screaming again. I woke him up and asked, in detail, if it was the same dream. He responded with, “What the heck are you talking about and why did you wake me up?” He recalled nothing.

As if the endless chattering weren’t enough, he tried to kill me once. In his sleep. Some how he got his fingers tangled deep in my hair, clenched his fist, and then proceeded to roll over. I woke up flying through the air, painfully propelled by my hair, seconds before my head smacked into his, and he woke up with a yell and said, “What are you doing to me!” As if I was trying to do him in. I sat there dumbfounded for a few seconds before I let into him about how he was beating up on me.

The worst thing about sharing a bed has to be the snoring. Now, everyone snores a bit. I snore when I’m hugely pregnant or if I have a cold. Chris snores all the time and not quietly, I might add. He sounds like he’s trying to communicate with a herd of deaf cattle. I snuggle into him and the next thing I know I’m having dreams where I’m trying to make this loud noise shut off. It’s usually an engine or a tornado or someone yelling at me. Then I wake up and realize that I’m actually sleeping with a weed whacker. I have rolled and shoved and begged Chris into several positions and it never helps. I try to solve the problem by falling asleep first. This was great back when I was a heavy sleeper. But after two kids keeping me up all night and my mom radar going off at the tiniest tiptoe of a sound, this isn’t working so well. In fact, there have been many sleepless nights where I have lain awake fantasizing about smothering him with my pillow; I am almost convinced it could be justifiable homicide.

These things were all much worse when I was expecting. There were many nights when I just slept on the couch during my first pregnancy. Although the snoring and the talking bugged me, the real problem was that pregnancy turned Chris into an olfactory nightmare. No matter how many times he showered or mouthwashed or applied deodorant every time he came with in three feet of me his stench sent me retching into the kitchen sink. The fact that he liked to curl up in bed and breathe on me all night was just unbearable. I would sleep facing the other direction for as long as I could and then grab a few pillows and blankets and build a little barricade between us to keep his stinkiness on his side of the bed. When I spent the last few months of that pregnancy in the hospital it was actually a relief to have the bed, as uncomfortable as it was, all to myself (well, as all to myself as you can get with a four pound kid using your rib cage as a punching bag).

With Maggie, I wasn’t nearly so nice. I finally just kicked him out into Jonas’ room so I had a chance at some rest. Chris, was pretty sweet about it, although not happy. I explained several times that I was actually doing him a favor, because he and I both know I can be a real shrew without adequate rest. He had two options: deal with a crazy psycho hormone lady when he was awake or give up his bed. Not much of a choice, eh? Upon Maggie’s birth, Chris thought he could come back to bed, but with Maggie in the bed, and Chris sleeping like a thrashing eel who would just keep snoring away if he smothered our newborn, he was kicked out again. Again, not happy, but tolerant.

Maggie is approaching her first birthday next week, and I have begun sleep training her. Chris is back in bed, conjuring thunderstorms in his nasal passages. I am back to fantasizing about old movies where the husband and wife have separate bedrooms. That would be perfect for me. I could snuggle a bit at night, maybe more if I felt so inspired, and then go back to my own bed for the purpose of sleep. Because, really, that’s all any mother really fantasizes about